Many less developed economies in Asia still face increasing challenges in conforming to the Codex Alimentarius – a globally recognized body responsible for setting food safety standards to help in the facilitation of international trade in safe foods. This is because the maximum residue limit (MRL) that result from pesticide residues on agricultural commodities is either not established or it is too low to reasonably comply with real-world use patterns of farmers. As a result, Asian trade is significantly constrained by rejections at the global market due to food safety issues, including excess MRLs for permitted pesticides, presence of prohibited pesticides, presence of quarantine plant pests, and pathogens and food-borne pathogens.

The Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS) Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) encourages WTO Members to harmonize or base their national measures for food safety on the international standards, guidelines and recommendations developed by Codex. While participation of Asian nations in the Codex Committee on Pesticide Residues (CCPR) has significantly increased, there is no clear organized effort on how to promote the inclusion of biopesticides into their integrated pest management (IPM) programmes. Further, there are no specific strategies to on how biopesticides can be used to mitigate the residues of conventional pesticides that can be problematic for trade.

IPM approaches have included utilization of biopesticides to overcome resistance issues and maintenance of beneficial insects. However, pesticide residues are primarily determined by the last application, therefore simply including a biopesticide in a rotation is not likely to result in lower residues of conventional products and will not help trade. A purely biopesticide programme would result in lower residues, but may not be sufficient alone to control the pest or be financially viable.