Hainan cowpea found to contain banned pesticide, Wuhan Municipal Agriculture Bureau reports

Eastday.com news, February 22: Yesterday the Wuhan Municipal Agriculture Bureau announced that on February 6, the bureau sent a letter to the Hainan Provincial Department of Agriculture requesting assistance in an investigation, and that as of the date of the letter, cowpeas produced in Hainan would be barred from the Wuhan market for three months.

The Municipal Agriculture Bureau said that from January to early February of this year, the Municipal Agricultural Inspection Center conducted multiple rounds of sample monitoring of cowpeas sold at locations including the Wushang Liangfan Fruit Lake store and the Baishazhou Agricultural By-Products Wholesale Market, and in every case found the banned pesticide isocarbophos. Tracing showed that all the samples exceeding the standard came from Yingzhou Town in Lingshui County, Hainan, and Yazhou Town in Sanya City.

Under the Law on the Quality and Safety of Agricultural Products and the province's market access system for the quality and safety of agricultural products, for three months cowpeas produced in Hainan will be banned from sale in all of Wuhan's wholesale markets, farmers' markets and supermarkets; only after the period expires and testing shows they meet standards may they enter the Wuhan market for sale again. As of now, the city has destroyed 3,596.9 kg of toxic cowpeas and successfully prevented nearly 25,000 kg of Hainan cowpeas from entering the Wuhan market for sale. After repeated inspections, no Hainan cowpeas are currently being sold in the city's agricultural wholesale markets, supermarkets or farmers' markets.