9.2 ‘Strategic cocoa pesticides’: criteria

The need for specific guidance, for farmers and warehousemen, cannot be over-emphasised and the method of communicating such messages is important. The use of lists appears to be unavoidable, so the approach suggested here is to identify an evidence-based, positive list of ‘Strategic cocoa pesticides’ (Appendix 4A) that can be recommended for specific important pests and stages in the supply chain.

Extra special care is needed for pesticides used against storage pests, in warehouses and in cocoa transport, for reasons described in Pesticide Selection (section 8.5).

The criteria for selecting pesticides, as in Appendix 4, have developed since the first edition of this manual: it proved over-simplistic to divide pesticides simply into ‘suitable’ and ‘unsuitable’ for cocoa.

As active substances have (and continue to be) phased out, it is vital to:

give forewarning about AI that have potential regulatory issues and
help identify effective substitute pest management solutions.

In previous editions, lists of promising but experimental control agents were included, that had relevant Codex, EU, Japanese and/or US import tolerances, or are likely to be submitted for registration.

Some of these compounds are now placed in lists A or B, with experimental agents still under consideration as discussed in Chapter 7.

We now divide AI that are known to be used on cocoa into three categories, but emphasise that they are for guidance and have no legal status: although any proposal to utilise a substance in list C should be challenged with the utmost scrutiny.

Even within a cocoa growing country, various organisations may publish lists of permitted pesticides, even if another institution is responsible (e.g. CocoBod Ghana, Coffee & Cocoa Council Côte d’Ivoire).

Cocoa buyers would probably also filter these lists, with respect to those of cooperating certifying bodies (e.g. Rainforest Alliance).

The three categories are:

A. List of strategic/registered pesticides for use in cocoa which:

have relevant EU/Japanese/US/Codex import tolerances; some EU MRL (mg.kg-1) may remain tMRL and their status should be checked regularly; those listed here refer to “Cocoa (fermented beans)” as in Reg. (EC) No 396/2005.
show acceptable levels of low mammalian toxicity and environmental impact and formulations do not belong to the highest toxicity group WHO/EPA Class I (apart from rodenticides and fumigants supplied as professional products).
have proven efficacious against an important pest species of cocoa: with registrations in at least two regional cocoa growing countries and publication of trial results in (preferably refereed) scientific literature.

B. Compounds to be used with great CAUTION (limited lifetime, restricted markets, etc).

These active substances:

are still registered in at least one OECD country (EU, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan…)
have accepted MRLs in some markets, but not others and/or…
are likely to be considered for substitution in the future in EU, but…
have shown demonstrable efficacy in at least one regional cocoa growing country
AI do not belong to WHO/EPA toxicity Class I (and must be Class II formulations or better): apart from rodenticides and fumigants supplied as professional products.

C. Pesticides that MUST NOT BE USED FOR COCOA

Substances that have been recorded as used on cocoa (e.g. by ECA/CABI/CAOBISCO projects), but have been rejected by major importing countries (usually for toxicological/ eco-toxicological reasons) and/or have no residue tolerances in major markets.