Unreliable Testing, Untraceable Origins: Can Produce Certificates Really Improve Food Safety?

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Over the past few years, media reports have frequently highlighted cases of street traders being fined for selling leeks, celery and other produce with pesticide residues exceeding permitted levels. Fines have ranged from as little as 5,000 to tens of thousands.

High-end supermarkets and mid-to-upmarket online grocers, upon which both the government and the public place considerable faith regarding food safety, appear to fare little better than the more modest wet markets. Earlier this year, the public interest organisation “Zirantian” arranged for consumers to purchase vegetables from several major e-commerce platforms for independent testing. The results revealed that produce with excessive pesticide residues was being sold on JD’s 7FRESH, Alibaba’s Hema and Meituan Maicai. In some instances, residue levels reached 55 times the legal limit, and highly toxic pesticides banned at a national level were even detected.

● Of the 18 varieties of vegetables submitted for testing by Zirantian in July this year, three exceeded permissible pesticide residue limits. For further details, please refer to “Consumer-submitted celery tests reveal chlorpyrifos levels up to 55 times the legal limit; 7FRESH, Hema Fresh and Meituan Waimai involved”
For the average consumer, where agricultural products actually originate, whether they carry pesticide residues, and if they pose any health risks, remains a perpetual mystery. The situation is such that some have remarked: if it amounts to slow suicide either way, one might as well opt for the cheapest choice.

Naturally, the government will not stand by and watch its citizens suffer. Since 2008, successive administrations and leaders have repeatedly and emphatically declared food safety to be their utmost priority.

How then can food safety be guaranteed? How can we ensure the fundamental baseline that pesticide residues do not exceed permissible limits? The latest answer from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs is to rely on the ‘Statement of Conformity Certificate’.

On 27 October this year, the Ministry issued the *Draft Measures for the Administration of the Statement of Conformity Certificate for Agricultural Product Quality and Safety*, mandating that agricultural production enterprises, farmers’ cooperatives, and any units or individuals purchasing agricultural products must issue a Statement of Conformity Certificate for their sales in accordance with regulations, ensuring that no banned substances or illegal additives are used and that routine pesticide and veterinary drug residues remain within safe limits.

The new rules also impose obligations on purchasers: beyond verifying the certificates provided by producers at the point of purchase, they must issue a fresh Statement of Conformity Certificate if the goods are repackaged or blended after acquisition.

The 2022 revision of the *Law on the Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products* has already enshrined this certificate into statute; the current release constitutes the detailed implementation guidelines following that legislation.

But can this solitary certificate truly resolve the safety concerns surrounding agricultural produce?

I. Unreliable Testing

But what does it actually take to be deemed ‘compliant’ under this so-called Statement of Conformity Certificate?

Pilots were first launched by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in select regions in 2016, before expanding into a nationwide trial in 2019. Throughout this trial phase, the certificate has hinged on a single principle: the producer’s own declaration serves as the sole basis for issuance. Producers need only pledge that they ‘do not use banned or withdrawn pesticides and veterinary drugs, nor illegal additives, and that routine residues remain within permissible limits.’

● During the pilot period, agricultural product compliance certificates previously issued by family farms in two different regions could simply rely on a “self-declaration of compliance”, whether handwritten or machine-printed.

However, the latest draft for public consultation recently released has removed the “self-declaration” option. According to this version, producers or purchasers wishing to prove they have not used unauthorised chemicals must meet one of the following criteria: “quality and safety controls comply with standards”, “passed self-testing”, or “passed commissioned testing”. In other words, they must either maintain a formal written management system or rely on continuous testing.

Abandoning subjective assurances in favour of objective test results may seem to raise standards, but assuming food is safe simply because it carries a “passed testing” stamp clearly underestimates the complexities of pesticide residue screening.

The simplest pesticide residue test kits on the market cost less than one yuan to produce. They can only detect organophosphorus and carbamate pesticides—highly toxic agents that are already being phased out under national regulations.

For comprehensive screening, operators must either establish their own testing laboratories with qualified staff or outsource to commercial testing companies. These services can provide residue data for dozens or even hundreds of pesticides, but costs range from a few hundred yuan to well over a thousand.

● Details of the testing capabilities of a low-cost pesticide rapid-test card sold online.

Given cost constraints, routine spot checks at large wholesale and retail markets only sample incoming vegetables using low-precision rapid testing methods, making comprehensive coverage impossible.

Different crops face different pests and diseases, requiring varying pesticides, and formulations have been constantly evolving in recent years. Most farmers struggle to understand the ingredients in these products, their potential hazards, or how to apply them responsibly to keep residues within legal limits.

Consequently, compared with the wide array of pesticides actually in use, the parameters covered by current spot checks inevitably miss far more than they catch.

Worse still, where there are regulations, there are bound to be loopholes. Laypeople, ordinary consumers, and even regulators can be easily misled by outcomes manipulated through technicalities.

In July this year, the non-profit organisation Natural Field discovered that celery sold by Hema Fresh in Beijing contained chlorpyrifos residues 4.6 times the legal limit, and reported the matter to government authorities. The Market Regulation Office in Dongsheng Town, Haidian District, responded that Hema had submitted multiple documents, including a test report, demonstrating no breach of the Food Safety Law, and declined to open a formal investigation. A closer look, however, reveals that Hema’s submitted report did not even test for chlorpyrifos.

It is difficult to tell which link in the chain—the supplier, the testing body, Hema, or the market regulators—is taking consumers for a ride when faced with celery already confirmed to contain levels of the banned pesticide chlorpyrifos that exceed legal limits.

● The test report issued by the Dongsheng Town Market Regulation Office to Natural Field does not include chlorpyrifos, the banned pesticide reported to be in excess.
This testing fiasco, characterised by complete miscommunication, underscores a persistent paradox in inspection regimes: constrained by costs, it is simply impractical to test every batch against every conceivable pesticide. Given that the “Certificate of Compliance” makes no mention of how testing should practically be conducted, one can readily anticipate that inspection will devolve into a bureaucratic exercise of technicalities and paperwork, ultimately failing to meaningfully elevate food safety standards across the marketplace.

II. Untraceable Origins

Put that aside: if the certificate cannot guarantee food safety, can it at least serve as a tool for traceability? The premise is that once excessive pesticide residues are discovered in the market, liability can be traced directly back to the producer.

For years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has been dedicated to establishing a traceability framework for agricultural goods, with the certificate positioned as a vital cog in the machinery. Last year, following the passage of the Agricultural Product Quality and Safety Law, the Legislative Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee explained to journalists that the system’s objective is to ensure “production records are auditable, product movement is trackable, and responsibility is clearly delineated.” In simpler terms, alongside routine testing, the alternative mechanism for accountability hinges entirely on traceability.

Yet the foremost obstacle to effective traceability lies in the labyrinthine distribution networks governing agricultural produce.

Consumers may well be accustomed to viewing origin details on supermarket labels or e-commerce platforms, sometimes even pinpointing the exact growing site. Yet expecting this traceability model to seamlessly integrate into the mainstream wholesale infrastructure is highly unrealistic.

Figures from the third national agricultural census reveal that smallholder farmers account for over 98% of agricultural operators in China, cultivating 70% of the country’s arable land. Yet it is the multi-tiered network of wholesalers and retailers that ultimately delivers this produce to consumers’ tables. This chain encompasses farmgate purchasers, primary wholesalers managing inter-provincial transport, and secondary or tertiary traders operating within major wholesale hubs.

Consequently, the produce shoppers purchase from urban greengrocers, supermarkets, or online retailers has likely changed hands four or five times before reaching them. Throughout this chain, goods from disparate growers are routinely consolidated or repackaged. Brokers specialising in vegetables often aggregate harvests from dozens of separate farms, pool them together, and subsequently distribute the stock across multiple channels.

The greens on a local market stall may well originate from dozens of distinct smallholders. A QR code on a supermarket shelf might indicate the broader production region or cooperative, yet it almost never discloses the identity of the specific grower.

● Late at night at Xinfadi Wholesale Market, a vegetable trader packs a lorry to the brim with celery.

The new regulations actually recognise the difficulty of tracing produce back to small-scale farmers. During pilot trials a few years back, there was a concerted push to have family farms issue compliance certificates, but given the likely poor uptake, the formal legislation has simply excluded them. The requirement now falls squarely on just two types of producers: agricultural production enterprises and farmer professional cooperatives.

Since tracing smallholders proves so difficult, the latest draft consultation paper shifts the pressure onto purchasers: “Entities and individuals purchasing agricultural products at the source must not only check the compliance certificates issued by producers at the time of purchase, but if the products are repacked or blended after purchase, they must issue a new Certificate of Conformity.”  The criteria for issuing the certificate remain the familiar three: “quality and safety controls meet standards”, “passed internal testing”, or “passed third-party testing”.

Put simply, if rural buyers sourcing from smallholders wish to stay compliant, they will likely need to carry testing kits to run checks as they buy. Even if these traders “go to the trouble” of testing and issuing paperwork, a certificate drawn up after blending lots will only identify the purchaser, not the actual grower behind each bundle of vegetables.

So, how much do these certificates actually contribute to traceability?

● Once produce enters the distribution channel, quality and safety depend almost entirely on random inspections carried out by market regulation authorities. The image shows the daily spot-check results posted at a fresh produce market in Beijing.
● Public display of pesticide spot-check results at Zuanxin Agricultural Market in Kunming.

While the certificate of conformity does little to aid traceability, it carries considerable deterrent weight for middlemen. Article 23 of the revised draft for public consultation stipulates that where random sampling of edible agricultural products accompanied by a certificate of compliance reveals banned pesticides or veterinary medicines, withdrawn veterinary medicines, unauthorised additives, or residues of conventional pesticides and veterinary medicines exceeding statutory limits, heavier penalties shall be imposed.

The regulation further adds that those who “can truthfully disclose the origin of their purchases and stock” may be exempt from penalties. Yet for the independent traders who scour fields day in, day out, determining exactly which farm each vegetable came from is practically impossible. Are we really expecting local growers to press their fingerprints onto every single cabbage from now on?

● Produce vendors at a rural market, selling wholesale vegetables pre-portioned in basins to avoid the hassle of weighing.
Now the purchasers find themselves caught in a genuine bind: fail to issue the certificate and get caught, and you face fines for repeated offences, starting at 100 yuan; issue it and risk pesticide residues exceeding limits, and you’re fined again, starting at 5,000 yuan. It truly is the 2023 equivalent of “making cabbage-seller profits while carrying drug-dealer worries”.

In practical terms, these vendors who spend their days buying vegetables from smallholders straight from the fields are under no obligation to act as government regulators for farmers, nor do they have the means to guarantee produce safety.

If the ultimate aim of these fines is to improve agricultural production, they still fall short of reaching the actual producers and are unlikely to tackle excessive pesticide use at the source.

Part Three: Smallholders and Vendors – A Reality They Cannot Escape

The commitment-based compliance certificate is not an unfounded concept. Within the tightly controlled import and export of agricultural goods, testing and traceability are standard practice. Yet, elevating a niche market procedure into a blanket regulation that mandates compliance across the entire sector is hardly a prudent move.

Nevertheless, reality has done little to temper those in authority’s vision of a “highly efficient and traceable” system; they seem reluctant to consider whether such an idea could actually be implemented on the ground.

Food safety experts often remark that “an overabundance of small-scale producers” is a key reason why managing food safety in China is so challenging, as if wiping out smallholders and local markets in favour of large farms and supermarkets would simply solve the problem. Despite being repeatedly contradicted by experience, this entrenched mindset refuses to shift.

After all, to some, if health codes could persuade well over a billion people to willingly open their mouths for a scan each day, how difficult could it possibly be to “tag” vegetables that do not even move?

● During the pilot phase, a record of a family farm issuing a commitment-based compliance certificate. With just a few taps on a smartphone app, the certificate can be printed. Yet, can the traceability challenges faced by smallholders truly be resolved simply by digitising the process?
Even sticking with the current regulatory framework, let us assume, for the sake of argument, that agricultural enterprises and cooperatives fully comply and issue the certificates as required. What happens to the countless smallholder farmers and family farms unable to produce them? And what of the small-scale collectors who simply lack the capacity to conduct field-level testing?

If smallholders disappear, who will tend to the fragmented plots of land? Without a vast network of small intermediaries, who will serve these scattered farmers? Without them, can China’s food supply remain secure? By that stage, food safety might be perfectly well managed, but food security itself could well be at risk.

A more likely outcome is this: as the entire system grows increasingly dependent on “test reports” and “management protocols” to govern agricultural safety, the market will gradually fall under the control of firms with the administrative capacity to draft paperwork and issue compliance certificates. Smallholders and minor intermediaries will either have to align themselves with these corporations or risk being pushed to the sidelines, eventually being phased out by the formalised market.

Online fresh-produce platforms operate on precisely the same logic, leveraging their scale and distribution networks to rapidly capture market share. Yet these ostensibly “more compliant” e-commerce ventures still prove incapable of guaranteeing food safety, as the recurrent breaches of residue limits in vegetables starkly demonstrate.

IV. Rather than going down a blind alley, it is time to rethink the regulatory approach

Roughly a decade ago, John K. Yasuda, a Japanese-American scholar researching food safety in China, observed that while the government expected companies and cooperatives to establish exemplary models for the safe production of agricultural goods, these initiatives had little practical impact on uplifting smallholder farmers. Put bluntly, those policies sidestepped smallholders entirely.

Yasuda later published his doctoral research on China’s food safety governance as the book *On Feeding the Mass*. He argues that food safety policy-making is caught in a fundamental dilemma: should limited resources be concentrated on a select few pilot enterprises, or distributed among all small-scale producers?

Today, the government’s capacity to deploy personnel and resources far surpasses what it was back then. In some regions, “grid workers” have even been assigned at the township level to oversee the quality and safety of agricultural produce. Yet the core issue remains much the same: Do we aim to sustain a system that merely appears to run “flawlessly,” where every regulatory policy is enforced on paper, gradually pushing certain actors out of sight until they disappear from the regulators’ radar? Or do we craft more pragmatic policies tailored to dispersed smallholders and street traders, thereby raising the baseline for food safety across the board?

Take pesticide and veterinary drug residues—the primary concern of the new qualification certificate rules. Beyond tighter oversight and harsher penalties, consider the long-standing pig slaughter and quarantine system. Despite being in place for years, has there been any training to promote safe medication practices, teaching farmers how to reduce chemical use? Have farmers been taught how to maintain plant health by improving soil and environmental conditions, thereby cutting down on chemical applications at the source? In the various training programmes available to farmers, e-commerce livestreaming and sales tactics are hyped relentlessly, while promoters of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides hold daily touring seminars. But who has ever genuinely cared about teaching them how to use fewer chemicals?

Let us shift perspective. Might the informal market—long looked down upon simply for operating “without a licence”—offer some valuable insights into tackling the complex challenges of food safety governance?

Although the pig slaughter and quarantine system has been enforced across the country for many years, informal slaughtering persists in rural areas. These operations rely on the most “traditional” informal channels: neighbourhood ties, door-to-door hawking, and local rural markets.

In the small workshops of a renowned culinary hub in Guangdong, beef slaughtered fresh that morning is turned into famous beef balls within just two hours. Although these workshops operate without the various government-mandated licences required for slaughter and production, locals do not shy away from this regional delicacy simply because it is unlicensed.

●These simply prepared loose meatballs, a local speciality, are widely available across regional markets.
For consumers buying uncertified meat and meatballs, trust does not rest on checking for official documentation, but is rooted in the traditional production methods and personal relationships that characterise local supply chains. Only through the establishment of close relationships can consumers trust their own judgement, ensuring that both producers and sellers share responsibility for food safety. Should issues arise, traceability remains straightforward thanks to these short supply chains, and the affected area is unlikely to be widespread. There is no need for the kind of nationwide recalls of unsafe agricultural produce so common in the US and Europe.

Surely this organic, mutual trust is far more reliable than relying on certificates? Should local governments not also draw on “local knowledge” to encourage trust-driven, short-chain production and distribution systems that connect growers, processors, retailers, and consumers?

At the very least, this would be far better than relying on a useless qualification certificate, sparing people the self-deceptive burden of leaving a paper trail at every step (whether the required ledgers are paper-based, in Excel, or via mini-programs and apps), or even being forced to fabricate records.

Finally, please note that the public consultation period for the *Measures for the Administration of Quality and Safety Commitment and Compliance Certificates for Agricultural Products (Draft for Comments)* closes on 27 November. With only a few hours remaining, we welcome you to make your voice heard through official channels. We also invite you to share your ideas and suggestions for the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in the comments section below.

Whole-process people’s democracy starts with each of us.

How to Submit Your Comments

1. Visit the China Government Legal Information Network of the Ministry of Justice of the People’s Republic of China (www.moj.gov.cn, www.chinalaw.gov.cn), navigate to the main menu on the homepage, select the “Legislative Comments Collection” section, and submit your feedback.

2. Visit the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs website (www.moa.gov.cn), go to the “Interaction” section at the top, select “Public Consultation”, and click on “Notice of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Soliciting Public Comments on the Measures for the Administration of Quality and Safety Commitment and Compliance Certificates for Agricultural Products (Draft for Comments)” to submit your feedback.

3. Email: fgslfc@163.com

4. Postal Address: Supervision Division, Department of Quality and Safety Supervision for Agricultural Products, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, No. 11 Nongzhanguan Nanli, Chaoyang District, Beijing. Postal Code: 100125

The deadline for submitting comments is 27 November 2023.

To read the full text of the draft, please follow the “Read Original Article” link here for details.

References

Notice of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs on Soliciting Public Comments on the Measures for the Administration of Quality and Safety Commitment and Compliance Certificates for Agricultural Products (Draft for Comments)

https://www.moa.gov.cn/govpublic/ncpzlaq/202310/t20231027_6439161.htm

Hema Fails Again! Consumer Tests Reveal Carbofuran, a Highly Restricted Pesticide, in Green Beans Exceeds Safe Limits

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/cDVYbjh9NlL87IGT_oPLKw

Follow-up on Chlorpyrifos Exceeding Limits in Celery: Market Regulation Bureaus in Two Affected Areas Decline to File Cases

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/uqO-xpnugzcBHhByloz12A

Newly Revised Law on Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products Passed by Vote; Legislative Affairs Commission of the National People’s Congress Holds Press Conference

https://www.chinanews.com.cn/gn/2022/09-02/9843254.shtml

Editor: Shitong Jun

Published by Foodthink