02/01/05 Japanese residue testing of grains

02/01/05 Japanese residue testing of grains

Farm and Ranch February 1, 2005 When wheat from the Pacific Northwest, or from other U.S. or world origins, arrives in Japan, it undergoes a battery of tests for chemical residues. It's one of the things Washington wheat grower Randy Suess learned about on a recent U.S. Wheat Associates' Team trip to Asia. In Japan the group visited the Japanese Grain Inspectors. Suess: "They had 15 different chemicals that they were doing analysis of and it was costing them a lot of money. They do three tests per ship load that comes in. Each one of those tests is $10,000 or $30,000 per shipment. We asked them specifically how many times the U.S. had acceded one of their tolerance levels in the past ten years and they said never. So we asked them why to they continue doing the tests and he said because that what the government wants and that's what the government pays for." Suess says chemical residues from grain storage protectants are a special concern to the Japanese, particularly spinosad, the active ingredient in Success, Laser and Tracer. But they also test for such things as glyphosate, the ingredient in Roundup and similar herbicides. Suess says when you compare the tolerance levels of 26 specific chemicals, the U.S. tolerance is greater for five of the chemicals, lower on six of them, and equal to the Japanese tolerance on 15. Suess notes that for spinosad, which the Japanese are particularly concerned about, the Japanese tolerance is point-oh-two parts per million but the U.S. tolerance is much higher at one part per million. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
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