TEHRAN – The members of Agriculture Committee of Tran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA) gathered in their 12th meeting this year to discuss issues in various agricultural fields especially the concerns about the level of pesticide residues in Iranian agricultural products.

As reported by the TCCIMA portal, recent rumors about the high level of pesticide residues in some of Iran's agricultural products have raised serious concerns among domestic consumers, while causing serious damage to exporters of agricultural products in the country which have been forced to export canned products.

In this regard, the TCCIMA Agriculture Committee has been holding various meetings with officials from the Agriculture Ministry in order to resolve the mentioned problems.

Speaking in the gathering, Head of the Association of Iranian Pesticide Producers Masoud Gilabadi said the existence of pesticide residues in agricultural products is not the producers of pesticides’ fault, noting that this problem should be sought in the distribution and consumption of pesticides by farmers.

Gilabadi noted that the recent incidents regarding the rejection of Iranian agricultural products from other country’s including Russia are something new which have never happened before.

Reacting to Gilabadi's remarks, Kaveh Zargaran, head of the TCCIMA Agriculture Committee, stressed that there was correspondence between Russia and the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs (IRICA) stating that the reason that the Russian customs rejected Iranian pepper cargoes was the presence of certain pesticide residues in the products.

Further in the meeting, TCCIMA Board Member Mohammad Reza Behzadian said that pesticide production in the country cannot meet the needs of the farmers to produce residue-free agricultural products, so restrictions on the import of high-quality pesticides from Europe should be lifted to allow the imports of such products.

EF/MA