Dealing with MRL's

Dealing With MRL's. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Around the globe, many countries accept varying levels of pesticide residue or MRL's. Mike Willett, Vice President for Scientific Affairs for the NW Hort Council says it's up to the individual countries but it may appear to be a bargaining ploy. WILLETT: If you are looking at it from a standpoint of is someone trying to keep us out of a market, yea, it could be used that way. I think that unfortunately what we are seeing particularly in Pacific Rim there's lots of concerns with the food safety particularly given issues that have arisen in China over that past few years. Willett says that for the most part those regulations are a blanket. WILLETT: And so these countries in the Pacific Rim that trade with China have real concerns about food safety so they put rules in place that catch maybe not only Chinese exporters but the whole rest of the world if they don't have a comprehensive system in place before they start enforcing it. A lot of the issue boils down to the pace that other countries adopt MRL's. WILLETT: The challenge that growers in the U.S. are facing is that increasingly over the past 10 years, growers have been moving towards plant protection products that are considered to be safe or safer pesticides. However the rate at which these are adopted and registered in the United States is much, much faster than they are being adopted and registered in some foreign countries. We'll continue this topic on Monday. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.