Wherever possible, these Guidelines are consistent with those of the Food and Agriculture Organization. FAO has assisted and supported Southeast Asian countries in the implementation of legislation to regulate the use of pesticide products since 1982. A key achievement has been preparation of the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides within Asia and the Pacific region. FAO recognises that a major constraint for member countries is enforcement of legal provisions due to political and economic developments that started during the early 1970s and lasted until the 1990s, creating a wide range of private sector activities in the field of pesticides. Synthetic pesticides started to be formulated and distributed in various Southeast Asian countries and they became an increasingly important economic trade factor creating psychological and economical dependencies among growers and other users of pesticides. (24) Guidance on the regulation of BCA, in their diversity that we encounter today, was not available until around 2007 (apart from an early FAO guidance document on micro-organisms from 1988). The regional GTZ programme ‘Commercialisation of Biopesticides in Southeast Asia’ made an attempt, in collaboration with three AMS (Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam), to develop and update data requirements for MCA and semiochemicals based on international guidance published by OECD. This also included an information exchange with and a visit to the OECD BioPesticide Steering Group at that time. At the end of 2012 the regional GIZ project ‘ASEAN Biocontrol for Sustainable Agrifood Systems’, under the framework of which the present Guidelines were written, invited AMS to establish a ‘regional BCA expert group on regulation’ to develop guidelines for all four major categories of BCA with regard to data requirements and procedural aspects of regulation, also including aspects of trade. The work was discussed with FAO, who had just completed a technical cooperation project on regulatory harmonisation of pesticides in the region and welcomed a concerted effort to focus on the regulation of BCA as an important product group with great potential for the development of sustainable agriculture in the region (51). The work of the expert group, which precipitated in the present Guidelines, also resulted in tables of ‘Minimum data requirements’ for microbials and botanicals (given in Appendix II). These Guidelines concentrate on formulated products and are structured on an FAO template. A tiered system is proposed (see section 4.3). In addition, for the first time there is now available guidance for regulators on field testing of microbials and botanicals (Appendix III). The current regulatory situation for BCA in ASEAN was intensively discussed with AMS during the work meetings of the BCA expert group on regulation. Before this group started its work at the end of 2012, FAO had conducted a first assessment on ‘biopesticides’ and found that most of the 40 4 Regulatory requirements 4.1 Towards a regulation for BCA in ASEAN 4.2 National frameworks
Implementing Biological Control Agents in the ASEAN Region
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