Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issuing new regulation on pesticide administration: Reshaping industry landscape and strengthening market supervision

A few days ago, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a notice on revision of five clauses of the Pesticide Registration Regulation, asking for nation-wide public opinions. The revision aims at perfection of the pesticide administration system, which will have a profound impact on the agricultural means of production and may lead to reshaping of the pesticide industry. 

The highlights of revision include the requirements that the registration certificate number and the registrant information of the technical manufacturers be clearly marked on the pesticide label; and that only one trademark be marked on the same pesticide product label of a same registrant, which ensure the registration be used in manner of ″one certificate for one product.″ These changes will terminate the authorized use of registrations or one registration being used for multiple products, thus reducing the number of pesticide products available to distribution in the market. As a result, this may pose a challenge to distributors, as there will be limited pesticides for distribution in the market. Hence, the times of distributor control of market distribution will come to an end. 

In the meantime, pesticide sellers with small number of registrations will face survival challenge and may even suffer a fatal blow. In addition, production relying on registrations of other registrants will be subject to crackdown, and market order will be better regulated. On the other side, the decrease in product supply may trigger an increase in prices, which will affect the balance of supply and demand of the pesticide market.

This revision stands for a stricter supervision of the pesticide market, which is of great significance to a standardized and healthy development of the pesticide industry.