Chinese vegetables are uncontaminated and safe to eat, and the pesticide residue standards set by Japan for imported vegetables are not justified, a Chinese expert said in Beijing Thursday.

"Japan's practice appears to be a kind of trade protectionism," Cao Xumin, president of the China Chamber of Commerce for Imports and Exports of Foodstuffs, Natural Produce and Animal By-Products, told Xinhua when talking about Japan's testing of vegetables imported from China.

This year Japan has spent much time and effort examining Chinese farm products and announced that Chinese frozen spinach has a pesticide residue above acceptable level. This has been overstated by some irresponsible members of the Japanese media.

Affected by such reports, the export volume of China's fresh-preserving vegetables to Japan was only 141,700 tons in the first six months of 2002, plummeting 23.27 percent year-on-year. The amount of temporarily-preserved and pickled vegetables exported to Japan also decreased.

Japan's restriction of Chinese vegetable imports conflicts with the non-discrimination principle set by the World Trade Organization, Cao said, adding that Japan is targeting China as 99 percent of Japan's imported spinach comes from China.

"China's vegetables are generally safe according to Japan's examining standards," Cao said, noting that only 0.5 percent of Chinese vegetables examined by Japan's Ministry of Health and Welfare from January to July this year were claimed to have excessive pesticide residue.

Even the Chinese spinach, the focus of Japanese media, is safe, he said. According to Japan's regulations, the residue of chlorpyrifos, a low-level poisonous pesticide, should not exceed 0.01 ppm when spinach is concerned.

However, Japan's chlorpyrifos standard when dealing with self-produced radish is as high as 3 ppm, 300 times more than for spinach, the expert explained.

Other Japanese staple vegetables also enjoy much more lenient chlorpyrifos restrictions, such as 2 ppm for cole, 1 ppm for cabbage and 0.5 ppm for tomato, he said.

Even in accordance with such unreasonable Japanese standard, only 41 out of 467 batches of Chinese spinach exported to Japan since late March were said to have excessive pesticide levels, said Cao.

If Chinese spinach is said to be "poisonous vegetable," then the Japanese cole, cabbage and tomato should be called "deadly poisonous vegetables," the Chinese expert said.

The conduct of Japanese government and relevant departments and the reports of Japanese media were not aimed at protecting Japanese consumers, but were actually a kind of trade protectionism in the name of food security, Cao said.

However, vegetable production in China was severely damaged, and Chinese farmers, as well as Japanese consumers, importers and food processors, suffered losses.

Japan should re-evaluate the fairness of its pesticide restrictions on the basis of WTO principles, and hold consultations with China for a proper solution to the issue, Cao Xumin said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 16, 2002)