Pesticide Residues And Food Safety Law In India: Overlapping Regulators

Abstract

Indian law regulates pesticides twice, and neither regulator is answerable for what the other does. The Insecticides Act 1968 governs registration, manufacture and sale through an agricultural ministry, while the Food Safety and Standards Act 2006 governs the residue that reaches the consumer through a health ministry. The two statutes share no common decision point, no shared evidentiary record and no obligation of mutual notification. This article examines the consequences of that separation for the setting of maximum residue limits, for surveillance, for enforcement against the seller of contaminated food, and for the consumer's remedy. It argues that the principal defect is not the absence of standards but the absence of a feedback path: residue data generated by the food safety regulator does not, as a matter of law, require the registering authority to revisit a registration, and the registering authority's approvals do not bind the residue standard setter. The article compares the Codex approach, in which the residue limit and the approved use are determined together, and examines the treatment of the precautionary principle in Indian environmental adjudication. It proposes a statutory duty of reference between the two regulators, a sunset period on registrations, a residue limit for every registered use, and a presumption operating against the seller where a sample exceeds the limit.