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AgVetLink: Number 68, June 2008

OECD Work on Pesticides

Warren Hughes, Programme Manager (Approvals and ACVM Standards), attended several meetings on the OECD's (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) work on pesticides in early June in Paris. These meetings covered a range of areas including minor use, joint reviews, harmonisation of information requirements, risk reduction and spray drift. Progress was given on a number of guidance documents in the areas of toxicology, ecotoxicity, and environmental fate. Some highlights from the meeting follow.

Residue chemistry

An update on the work of the Expert Group on Residue Chemistry was presented. Of interest is the latest work on guidelines on residue trial protocols, including number of trials required for a crop/compound combination.

The latter was of particular interest as various countries differ significantly over the number of trials. The Expert Group believes the minimum number of trials should be three for a crop/compound combination.

Other areas of work include extrapolating residue data within a crop grouping and extrapolation of residue data from different geographical locations.

The ACVM Group will consider these matters once they are adopted to decide if we need to update our information requirements to align with OECD guidance and guideline documents.

Minor crops/minor uses

A meeting of the Expert Group on Minor Crops/Minor Uses was held. New Zealand is a member of this group which has been tasked to explore options to facilitate minor crops/minor uses in countries. Discussions covered:

• collating baseline information on what resources, such as databases on data sets, are available

• examining liability and data protection issues

• sharing data among regulators and industry

• defining minor crops/minor uses.

Joint reviews for new chemistry

Over the past few years OECD countries have been working on joint reviews for new chemistry. Various regulators collaborate with each other to review parts of a global data package submitted by a chemical company. The intentions are:

• to reduce regulatory timeframes (and hence reduce costs) and

• to have the new chemistry approved in countries approximately at the same time.

A workshop on the lessons learned from the first few joint reviews is planned for December. Part of this workshop is to develop some guidelines for chemical companies and regulators on procedures for managing joint reviews. At this stage New Zealand has not participated in any joint reviews.

Information technology

Current information technology work involves development of templates (XML format) for chemical companies to use for reporting on studies and the ability of regulators to use these templates for developing monographs. In addition, work is being undertaken to allow for electronic data exchange among regulators and between regulators and industry.

Spray drift

A one day seminar was held on spray drift and mechanisms to reduce spray drift. A number of countries gave presentations on their requirements to reduce spray drift. A common theme among the presentations was the use of spray buffer zones.

An outcome from the seminar was a proposal for countries:

• to work together more closely on exchanging information on spray drift incidents and

• to encourage new technologies such as spray nozzles to reduce spray drift.

Labelling

An interesting presentation was made by the US Environmental Protection Agency on some labelling proposals. These included:

• submission of electronic labels rather than hard copies to assist in the regulatory assessment process and

• a website for end users to obtain information on directions and precautions for a product rather than obtaining this information from the label affixed to the container.

This would mean the information on the physical label could be reduced significantly and any changes to directions or precautions would be more up-to-date as this information is available on the website.