The right and wrong of agricultural residues of traditional Chinese medicine exceeding the standard

On June 27, pharmaceutical companies stated that, in view of the 9 pharmaceutical companies involved in the investigation report on pesticide pollution of traditional Chinese Medicine issued by Greenpeace, the international environmental protection organization, except for Jiuzhitang (11.06,0.07,0.64%), which did not detect the problem, new financial reporters conducted telephone or fax interviews one by one for the other 8 On June 24, Wang Jing, director of the Greenpeace project, said at a press conference that between July 2012 and April 2013, nine chain Chinese pharmacies in many cities, including Beijing Tongrentang (21.88,0.15,0.69%), Yunnan Baiyao (84.01, - 1.15, -65 kinds of traditional Chinese medicine products purchased by Tena, Hu qingyutang, Caizhilin, hongjitang and Zhang Zhongjing of Guangyao group were tested by the third-party laboratory According to the maximum pesticide residue standard of EU (MRL, hereinafter referred to as EU standard), 48 kinds of pesticide residues were found, and 6 kinds of pesticides forbidden to be used in traditional Chinese medicine were detected in some products, such as phorate and methamidophos , Budweiser, etc However, Wang Jing did not disclose the name of the independent third-party laboratory claimed to be qualified due to the agreement with the laboratory to avoid interference from external pressure However, she stressed that the laboratory is a testing agency with both domestic and international qualifications, and the test was conducted in China Although Greenpeace has stated in the investigation report that before the test, it was "put the sampling package into the sealed bag for complete sealing under the condition of ensuring that there is no cross contamination in the sampling package", in the view of some pharmaceutical companies involved, there are such things as "how can it prove that it was bought in our drugstore, we have to take out the evidence of purchase", "the sample is not accurate, is it representative", "is it tested or not" Have authority "and so on In many responses from pharmaceutical companies involved, the new financial reporter found that, except for the unknown testing agency, another controversial point about the survey report was whether the test standard compared in the report was EU standard And "we do it in accordance with the requirements of the state" has become the best saying for pharmaceutical companies involved "The national standards we implement do not have these indicators, so there is no problem of exceeding the standard." He Yuankai, quality manager of Tena, said that even with reference to EU standards, "some indicators have not exceeded the standard." What puzzled him was that when it happened, "we don't know which standard to implement." Wang Jing said that this is also the reason why Greenpeace chose the EU standard for comparison The Chinese Pharmacopoeia has very few provisions on pesticide residues in Chinese herbal medicines He Yuankai didn't deny that, "we tested it according to the Chinese Pharmacopoeia It has some tests for agricultural residues, but there are few test items, only for BHC, DDT, etc." Pang Jianhui, a director of Guangzhou Pharmaceutical (34.26, - 0.28, - 0.81%) said that the products sold by Caizhilin, a subordinate enterprise of the group, had been detected with pesticide residues "That's not the medicinal materials produced by Caizhilin itself When purchasing, it's all in line with the requirements of the state how to detect and how to detect them." "We have a set of standardized process, which is based on the process step by step, rather than buying at will," said Caizhilin's staff Zhang Zhongjing's Cao manager, who is in charge of Chinese herbal pieces, said that the Chinese herbal pieces sold by him "are all purchased from regular pieces factories" He said, "we are operating companies Without this test, all the tests are in production enterprises." A staff member of hongjitang's quality control department said similarly, "retail, the state does not require testing." But when the new financial reporter asked the specific meaning of the words, he was reluctant to talk about it on the grounds of "not knowing" In Tongrentang, Beijing, where there are many varieties and pesticide residues detected in the investigation report, Guo, director of the publicity department, said that Zhao, director of the brand department, could be contacted in this matter However, the new financial reporter called Zhao several times, not to be told that Zhao was in a meeting, but that the phone was busy or there was no answer In addition, Yunnan Baiyao and Hu qingyutang did not reply before the deadline During the interview, the attitude of some pharmaceutical companies involved was to avoid The head of public relations of one pharmaceutical company directly expressed his concern in his heart, "we think it's not worth the loss to explain this matter alone." According to the head of public relations, this is the problem of Chinese herbal pieces sold by drugstores, and the low-key treatment is chosen to avoid the incident involving the proprietary products The practical problem is based on the above statement that some pharmaceutical enterprises do not need to test when purchasing pharmacies Xu Lingni, a researcher in the pharmaceutical industry of CIC, believes that retail and other business enterprises (non production enterprises) do not test the purchase and purchase of Chinese herbal pieces before they purchase them for sale, because the law does not require that they must be tested, from the perspective of cost saving To a certain extent, this shows that there are omissions in the purchase control of pharmaceutical enterprises However, it is not optimistic to trace back to the source planting It is understood that traditional Chinese medicine can be divided into wild and artificial cultivation, of which wild medicine accounts for nearly 60% Among the remaining 40%, "gap (Chinese medicine production quality management standard) base accounts for less than 1 / 3." According to an industry expert related to traditional Chinese medicine, some of them are not gap certified planting bases, and some of them are planted by farmers themselves Among the many pharmaceutical enterprises involved in this event, there are not a few that own gap bases, but even so, the problem of excessive pesticide residues still exists In the investigation report, 51.6 mg / kg of thiophanate methyl residue was detected in the price flowers of Panax notoginseng purchased by Beijing Tongrentang, which is 500 times higher than the EU standard, and contains a certain amount of banned pesticides for Chinese herbal medicines The experts in the industry said, "it is very good to be able to enter Beijing Tongrentang (Chinese herbal pieces)", but there is no guarantee that all of them come from gap base After all, "most of the Chinese herbal medicines from gap base are used for the production of Chinese patent medicine, and very few are used in retail or hospital, because GAP base is very few." The investigation report also showed that there were pesticide residues in the samples of Panax notoginseng and Panax notoginseng, and a small amount of banned pesticides were also detected In the result of self-examination after the incident, he Yuankai said frankly, "in the process of planting, our base uses pesticides, but they are all allowed by the state, no banned pesticides are used, and there is no pollution in the production process Yes " He also said that since the batch number of the purchased products was not published in the investigation report, it was impossible to further check which base it came from, so he could only preliminarily infer that "the land planted with the price of Panax notoginseng is subject to rotation, which may be because it (detected banned pesticides) remains in the land, or some sprayed pesticides near the base pollute the price of Panax notoginseng through air transmission and irrigation water pollution Planting base, we are also looking for reasons " The experts in the industry also said that certain historical reasons can not be ruled out - some years ago, when farmers planted, they used some pesticides that are now banned These pesticides deposited in the soil may take 70 years to metabolize; while when airplanes were used to spread pesticides, a large area of land was all polluted, which may not protect the wild traditional Chinese medicine "Land pollution is the most serious problem The great source " In addition, the operability of gap base can not be ignored "Gap bases are often formal As long as pharmaceutical enterprises have passed the gap certification, they will be contracted and planted by farmers Farmers will not take care of this As long as they grow a large amount of Chinese herbal medicines, they need to apply a lot of fertilizer and use a lot of pesticides if they want to grow a large amount of Chinese herbal medicines without pests and diseases." The above industry experts also said that "gap standard is not easy to implement", because "if we operate in full accordance with gap standard, the cost will be very high." For example, if a medicinal material is planted according to the gap method, the retail price should reach yuan / Jin, but there are a large number of non gap standard medicinal materials on the market, and the market price is only yuan / Jin Then, the gap base is operated according to the gap standard during the inspection After the experts or the inspection team leave, it returns to the original planting state, which makes the gap standard not met in the actual operation According to the opinion of the experts in the industry, whether it is appropriate to test with reference to the EU standard is that the focus of Chinese standard is different from that of the EU standard, not necessarily the comparison variance The EU standard emphasizes the content of chemical components and heavy metals, which are indicators, while the standard of Chinese herbal medicine is the appearance and smell of traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine does not define its properties according to the effective components, but according to the According to the formula and compatibility, the ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine are very complex, relying on the accumulation of experience, so the consideration of traditional Chinese medicine is more based on the Chinese Pharmacopoeia But at the same time, he also does not deny that the excessive heavy metal and other reasons may have affected the development of Chinese herbal medicine, and the decline of drug resistance is becoming increasingly obvious The original use of 5g is enough, but now the use of 10G is not obvious, so it needs 15g to solve the problem that only 5g was used No matter whether the EU standard is applicable or not, he Yuankai said that after the preliminary self-examination, they are going to test the pesticide residues of the raw materials currently purchased according to the EU standard through a third-party organization, so as to determine whether their suppliers have used the banned pesticides in the country and conduct a practical investigation on their pesticide use.