CAIRO: The Ministry of Trade and Industry and the Ministry of Agriculture reached an agreement Sunday on starting a new, comprehensive system for monitoring pesticide residues in Egyptian agricultural products. According to a statement issued by the Ministry of Trade and Industry, this is to ensure that the residual amount of pesticides in Egyptian agricultural products are in line with international health and safety standards to ensure that consumers of the products are protected. “The use of scientific methods to deal with agricultural pesticides has become necessary in the Egyptian agricultural sector so as to ensure that Egyptian consumers in the domestic market have access to healthy goods and agricultural products,” said Rachid in the statement. The minister also stressed the importance of this system to ensure the continued flow of Egypt's agricultural exports to global markets, explaining that most of the world's importers require specific standards to monitor the use of pesticides in agriculture as a condition for the products' entry into these markets. Abaza, on the other hand, said that the safe use of pesticides has become an issue, vital to the cultivation of Egyptian land and added that a watchdog must be created to monitor the process of the distribution of pesticides and their use.
He said that the two ministries will set up a joint committee to develop this system for monitoring and control.
Abdel-Aal El-Sayed, laboratory director at SGS Egypt, lauded the decision stressing its benefits for both agricultural exports and local consumers.
SGS Egypt, part of SGS International Group, a global inspection, monitoring and certification company, has been present in Egypt since 1965 and launched its first pesticide residues analysis laboratory in Cairo in 2008. The company actively serves both the agriculture and food export industries, providing verification, testing and certification services to both the public and private sectors. “Monitoring is crucial to decreasing use of illegal pesticides, and will prevent farmers from using pesticides on the wrong types of crops,” he said. El-Sayed explained that Egyptian farmers are unaware of the good practices of pesticide use and pesticide spraying and have no idea which pesticides should be used with each specific crop. “When the time for harvesting comes, harmful elements in pesticide residue should have faded out completely from crops,” he added, “this is not true in most cases.” El-Sayed pointed out that most of the major farms in Egypt which export their agricultural produce usually hire international companies to analyze pesticide residue and certify their products and said that the decision made by the ministries is more important for the health and safety of Egyptian citizens. He continued that small farmers in Egypt, which comprise more than 90 percent of all farms in the country, use traditional, incorrect pesticide spraying practices that have been handed down from previous generations. According to El-Sayed, some farmers do not really care for health and safety standards spraying ridiculous amounts of pesticides on crops “to the extent that you can walk by a potato stand and smell the pesticides in them.” El-Sayed said that the decision to create this monitoring system will eventually make him personally, and every Egyptian citizen, feel more secure and trusting of locally produced foods and felt that it would be good business for laboratories like SGS. He concluded that the issue should also be addressed by raising the awareness of small farmers in Egypt on pesticide use.
