Recall expired pesticides and cause bankruptcy

Discarded pesticide bags and pesticide bottles in a large tank in the vegetable head of Tangwang Town, Jinan City. (Photo by Guo Xulei)

Sinochem New Network News “Seeing this year's pesticide demand in the off-season is coming, but my store has tens of kilograms of pesticides that entered the past few years and will soon expire. I don’t know what to do.” A pesticide in Henan The person in charge of the dealer told CCIN reporters. According to the CCIN reporter, over the years, the problem of handling expired pesticides has been plaguing the entire pesticide market.

At present, on the pesticide industry chain in China, manufacturers produce products that are distributed to hundreds of thousands of distributors throughout the urban and rural areas to enter the market and sell them to rural users. Due to changes in the market and changes in business conditions, dealers could not sell the purchased pesticides in time and the products were stored at dealers. Therefore, expired pesticides are mainly concentrated in the hands of dealers.

According to Zhao Haibin, a pesticide expert from the Heilongjiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, although the previous “Pesticide Management Regulations” has some provisions for the treatment of expired pesticides, for example, the treatment of expired and end-of-life pesticides, “Strictly abide by the relevant provisions of environmental protection laws and regulations. To prevent pollution of the environment." However, no specific treatment method has been specified and no specific implementation department has been designated. Excluding expired pesticides is difficult to handle, which not only becomes a major problem for the pesticide market, but also becomes a major hidden danger to the environment.

To this end, the new edition of the “Regulations on Pesticide Management,” which just concluded its consultation, specifically stipulates that pesticides that are out of date should be recalled by the manufacturer.

The new version of the “Pesticide Management Regulations” seems to have solved the problem of the recovery and disposal of expired pesticides. However, the CCIN reporter found during the interview that both the distributors and the production companies stated that the recall of expired pesticides will not be implemented smoothly.

Difficulties for distributors: Production companies accept only a small number of returns. In accordance with the provisions of the Regulations, the route for recalling expired pesticides begins with distributors, who are responsible for returning expired pesticides to the production companies.

A pesticide expert told CCIN that expired pesticides that need to be recalled are basically stored in pesticide dealers. Therefore, the first contractor to recall expired pesticides is actually a distributor.

In this regard, dealers have difficulties.

A pesticide dealer in Shandong told CCIN that pesticide manufacturers often set a return limit for dealers, which generally cannot exceed 5% of sales. If the dealer's expired pesticide exceeds this limit, the manufacturer will not accept the return. "When we sign a sales agreement with a manufacturer, we generally have to accept the manufacturer's proposed return limit and agree on the amount of return, and the return shipping cost will be borne by the dealer." The dealer said that although it is now necessary to establish expired pesticides The recall system, but if there is no provision for manufacturers to change the original practice, we have no way.

In addition, even if dealers can pay their own money to return expired pesticides to production companies, the cost of pesticides can also be a problem.

Zhou Shoucong, chairman of the Zhanjiang Pesticide Industry Association, said that when a production company receives an expired product that is returned, it usually only replaces the goods with its value according to its value. It is impossible to refund expired pesticides with similar products.

"As a result, the dealers lost the benefits of changes in freight rates and market prices, not to mention that the products they bought back are not necessarily what the market needs, and there will be uncertainty in future sales. This further increases our costs. "The above-mentioned dealers in Shandong said that because of this, in the past, many dealers did not return products for a small amount of expired products.

As a result, dealers secretly sell to unsuspecting users, or change their dates and resell them. In places where the concentration of some pesticides was sold in the south, there were even machines that specifically modified expired pesticide labels. There are also unscrupulous distributors who even directly discard expired pesticides, with serious consequences.

Of course, production companies have another argument.

Tian Kechang, head of technology of Xingtai Pesticide Co., Ltd., explained to the CCIN reporter: “Setting a return limit for dealers is also a requirement for the production enterprises. Because dealers often book large quantities of goods at the beginning of the year, they only pay a portion of the prepayments. In this case, the liquidity that is used by the production enterprise is taken up. If the number of goods that the dealers are required to purchase each year far exceeds their sales capacity, if a large number of expired pesticides are returned, this will undoubtedly impose a huge burden on the production enterprises."

Liang Tianfu, general manager of Guangxi Antai Chemical Co., Ltd., said that it is difficult for production companies to complete the recovery and disposal of expired pesticides alone, and that distributors must also cooperate in the specific operations. "At the sales stage, it is very difficult for us to control the behavior of dealers. That is to say, we cannot control the amount of expired pesticides," said Liang Tianfu.

Recently, the Trade and Industry Bureau of Dunhua City, Jilin Province has seized a case of pit farmers who sold expired pesticides. The picture shows the farmers reluctantly looking at the croplands that did not play a role in weed control after spraying expired pesticides. (Li Lan photo)

Difficulties of production companies: handling costs, causing bankruptcy Facing the recall system of expired pesticides, some manufacturing companies, although very much in agreement, said that it is very difficult to undertake this task.

Zhang Qinghua, deputy general manager of Jiangsu Limin Chemical Industry Co., Ltd., told CCIN reporters that the recall of expired pesticides will increase the processing costs of production companies. "Companies generally treat recycled pesticides that cannot be reused as 'three wastes', which will naturally increase the company's 'three wastes' processing workload and cost."

Xing Tai Pesticide Co., Ltd. Tian Kechang said that for the recall of expired pesticides, in fact, their companies are already doing so. For example, some pesticides have a shelf life of 2 years. If the distributors have not sold them at the time, companies will take the initiative to recall these pesticides because of the financial pressure of the funds collected. In general, EC and other products are relatively stable, and the actual shelf life can exceed 2 years. If recalled, the company will test the product's indicators. If the content of active ingredients is not enough, it will be added to add the appropriate ingredients. How much, after such recycled products still meet the quality requirements, can continue to enter the market.

“But for some special pesticides, such as Mara*P, even if a recall system is used, it will not be able to solve the problem. Because Mara* phosphor itself is low-toxic, long-term, it will produce highly toxic isomarsol, phosphorus, etc. Once a substance has been produced, it must be detoxified after the recall, but the cost of processing such a product is not affordable to all manufacturers. For example, if one ton of pesticide is sold for 20,000 yuan, if To deal with one ton of expired products, the necessary cost may reach 50,000 yuan, so that the pesticide company loses the product and also has to pay a huge amount of processing costs, which is enough for any pesticide company to go bankrupt. Moreover, for these expired pesticides The processing technology is not available to any production company and may need to be handed to a qualified and specialized company for processing. The costs are even more difficult to control. So based on this situation, manufacturers and distributors must maintain coordination. Need to produce, purchase on demand, and timely sell pesticides to users, so as to avoid both recalls and catastrophic losses, Tian said.

The person in charge of a pesticide production company in Hubei also told CCIN that due to the fact that there are sometimes only a small amount of expired pesticides scattered at various agricultural supply points, the costs of transportation and recycling are often higher than the value of pesticides. Therefore, it is difficult for manufacturers to have the initiative to do this.

In addition, the production companies deal with the recall of expired pesticides also face great technical problems. Professor Xu Hanhong, a pesticide expert at South China Agricultural University, said that expired pesticides are different from other expired products. After the pesticide product exceeds the quality assurance period, it is not simply that the active ingredient of the pharmaceutical product has declined. Because of the complex composition of pesticide products, they may be degraded and converted into new toxic substances during long-term storage. For example, acetamide is a kind of low-toxic pesticide, but it may become a highly toxic pesticide after it expires. To deal with it requires related technologies.

Difficulties in implementation: No supporting measures are far from enough. A person in charge of the technical department of Shandong Huayang Pesticide and Chemicals Group believes that in the process of recalling expired pesticides, pesticide production enterprises must take the main responsibility, but dealers must also be like sales. Responsible for product circulation is also responsible for the recovery of expired products from the grassroots channels and consumers. "This must be a perfect system to ensure."

According to CCIN reporters, at present, the state only says that it wants to establish a recall system for expired pesticides. However, it is still unknown whether this system includes what content, what the responsibility of all parties involved is, and what department of the government is responsible for supervising the recall and processing of expired pesticides. .

The person in charge of Huayang Pesticide stated: “The state functional departments should assume the responsibility of regulating the handling of outdated pesticides and supervising the process of overdue product handling. They should introduce manageable measures for the implementation of obsolete pesticide products that are enforceable and expired pesticides. The recall system guides pesticide production companies, distributors and farmers to handle overdue pesticides and avoids secondary pollution caused by simple burial, incineration and dumping. Water will not be lost.” Therefore, he suggested that the state should set up a special agency to open the package of expired pesticides that were recalled by the company and then carry out quality inspections. “Some pesticides have expired, but their effective ingredients are still present. This part of the pesticides cannot be simply handled. It should allow production companies to redeploy them to meet the relevant national standards and sell them. But this requires a system to ensure that companies do not Will simply change the label to re-sale." He said that for the recall process of expired pesticides and after the recall processing, should be strengthened by the competent authorities to supervise the market, through the sampling of the quality of pesticide products on the market to control.

Zhang Qinghua also said that the recovery and use of expired pesticides should allow companies to recycle. For expired pesticides that cannot be recycled or even mutated, they must be handled in accordance with the "three wastes" treatment system and procedures. "Of course, this requires strict technical standards and operational procedures to control, and related government departments also need to fulfill their regulatory responsibilities. At the same time, it is necessary to establish corresponding technical specifications and standards."

The biggest problem in the entire recall of expired pesticides is cost. Previously, outdated pesticides were handled centrally by competent government departments at all levels. Although the cost was relatively high, most of them were government pay orders. However, the new expired pesticide recall system clearly stated that the costs should be borne by the manufacturers and distributors. In this regard, companies believe that the country should have a corresponding compensation system.

The person in charge of a pesticide production company in Guangxi said: “The current situation of pesticide companies has been very difficult. In order to give enterprises a chance to recuperate and regenerate, if they cannot suspend the implementation of the pesticide recovery system, they need to help through the compensation mechanism in the system design. And encourage companies to recall expired pesticides. Otherwise, the effectiveness of this system will be greatly reduced, it is difficult to achieve the desired results."

Mengzi County, Yunnan, industrial and commercial personnel in a pesticide store to check for expired pesticides. (Photo by Sword)