TAIPEI: The Council of Agriculture (COA) reaffirmed yesterday that it will continue promoting the existing agricultural and food safety certification systems in 2010 as part of efforts to create healthy agriculture in Taiwan.

The systems include an agricultural production and distribution traceability system - a mechanism to trace the origin of produce and another to regulate the planting and distribution of agricultural products, according to a COA statement released yesterday.

A system to certify vegetables and fruit as non-toxic - meaning they have safe levels of pesticides or that no pesticides were used in the cultivation process - known as the "Good Agriculture Practice (GAP)," and the Certified Agricultural Standards (CAS) mechanism, will also continue to be part of the COA's safe agricultural products management measures, the statement said.

Continuing its practice of the past year, the COA will leave it up to farmers to decide whether or not to join the COA-promoted agricultural production and distribution traceability system, which requires them to provide detailed information of their production process.

COA officials explained that joining the system will be voluntary, because most farmers in Taiwan are in their senior years, and many of them are not good at record-keeping and digitizing their production process and results.

Besides, the system requires the farmers pay for the relatively-high test and certification fees, according to the COA; but since many farmers maintain small gardens or vegetable patches, they may not be able to afford the fees, the COA said.

Given these circumstances, the COA said a pragmatic way to promote safe agriculture is "guiding" instead of "forcing" local farmers as well as fish and livestock breeders to follow the COA-promoted safety regulations.

According to COA statistics, since Taiwan's law regulating agricultural products production and certificate screening management was enacted on January 29, 2007, a total of 1,694 agricultural operators around Taiwan have passed the agricultural and food traceability certification as of the end of 2009.

Their certified merchandise cover 132 different kinds of agricultural, fishery and livestock products, the tallies show.

The COA has assessed that the production value of GAP-and-CAS-certified agricultural products, organic products and the traceable agricultural products will reach NT$60 billion ($1.88 billion) this year.

China Daily/CNA

(HK Edition 01/06/2010 page2)