Ministry of Agriculture to cut pesticide appellation to regulate trademark management

The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture issues six new regulations on appellation, label and brand mark of pesticide recently so as to enhance management for agricultural chemical products. It is estimated that the amount of pesticide's appellations would be reduced from 16,000 to 1,700 after adopting the regulations. Also according to the documents, the appellation of pesticide will be marked foreground, and each word in a trademark should not be bigger that in the relevant appellation, thus, such problems as multi-appellations for one pesticide and over amounted of products will be solved.

As for the problems concerning the impact upon the self-independent brands after cutting appellations, Wang Shoucong, Deputy Director of Plant Management Division of the Ministry of Agriculture, says that the trademark will be still be used after cutting appellations, and the new regulations will be beneficial to brand establishment, because, under a fair competitive environment, a sound brand was not established by a appellation itself without the quality of the product and service the enterprises offered.

The six new regulations, formulated by the Ministry according to the Administration Permission Law of People's Republic of China, are all within the framework of Pesticide Regulatory Statutes. Except amending the existed Implemental Method of Pesticide Regulatory Statutes and Data Requirement of Pesticide Registration, the documents also regulate the management of label, appellation and quality of pesticide.

On December 8, the Ministry issued three decrees, which are the Decision on Amending the Implement Method of Pesticide Regulatory Statutes, the Data Provision of Pesticide Registration and the Administration Method for Label and Instruction of Pesticide and published a bulletin concerning the management of pesticide's registration and approval.

On December 12, the Ministry, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, issued two bulletins concerning pesticide naming and the content of effective component of pesticides.