INDIAN authorities responsible for regulating pesticides have one big obsession: Codex. Officials, from both the ministries of agriculture and health and family welfare, have favoured taking refuge in standards set by the Codex Alimentarius Commission (CAC). And they are not alone. The Indian industry, and its various associations cannot be more thankful. Why? Because Codex standards are lax.

The CAC was set up in 1961 and has two major arms: the Joint Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) World Health Organization (WHO) Meeting on Pesticide Residues (JMPR) and the Codex Committee on Pesticides Residue (CCPR). While the JMPR sets the standards for acceptable toxicity levels of a pesticide, the acceptable daily intake (ADI), the CCPR sets up the standards for amount of pesticides that can be allowed in raw agriculture commodities, the maximum residue levels (MRL). It is clearly evident that standards set by Codex are lenient when compared to some of the national standards set by a few countries. For example, the JMPR ADI for malathion, a pesticide, allows people to consume ten times more of the chemical than allowed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Is the tolerance level of a person in US less than that of one in India?

The CAC reiterates that health is first on its agenda. They also admit that they depend, entirely, on the data supplied by the manufacturers of chemicals. It is argued that the data is reviewed and peer-reviewed very carefully. And there remains the provision of an