China rejects Indian chillis, Japan our mangoes. Who is checking what we eat?

Last week, China’s customs authorities rejected Indian chilli shipments carrying what they described as excessive levels of methamidophos – a pesticide associated with nervous system disorders.

China had earlier rejected 70 consignments of Indian non-basmati rice. And a few weeks earlier, Japan had banned Indian mangoes for the second time in four decades after a Japanese inspection team found deficiencies in fumigation protocols at Indian plants. 

Parts of the industry were alarmed. Chilli exporters in Andhra Pradesh wrote to the state government and called on the Centre to address pesticide residue problems, urging stricter testing, better awareness of good agricultural practices among farmers, and curbs on hazardous chemicals. The Mango Growers Association sought government intervention, and bodies like the Federation of Indian Spice Stakeholders flagged that rejection rates from European importers had climbed to 20 percent, up from around 5 percent not long ago. The Spices Board, having already issued comprehensive export guidelines in May 2024, doubled down on testing requirements.

None of this is new, and that’s the point.

A familiar alarm

In early 2024, Hong Kong’s food safety authority flagged the presence of ethylene oxide in popular Indian spice blends made by MDH and Everest. Ethylene oxide, or EtO, is a Group 1 carcinogen classified by the WHO’s cancer research agency.

Singapore followed with a recall. By the end of April, five countries had either banned, recalled, or launched investigations into Indian spices. India’s response, once the international alarm had sounded, was to ask states to test for pesticide residues. Maharashtra’s food regulator found ethylene oxide in five Everest samples and wrote to FSSAI seeking guidance. Only Rajasthan announced a recall of select batches.

Scroll later reported that of 251 samples collected nationwide, 104 had not been tested at the time an RTI response was filed. The publication also reported that spices sold in the domestic market are not routinely tested for ethylene oxide or pesticide residues unless regulators issue a specific directive. Ethylene oxide was “not unusual” in spices, condiments, fruits and vegetables, it found.

The response for export markets was different. A May 2024 Spices Board circular required exporters to identify ethylene oxide as a hazard, test raw materials and finished products, maintain records and investigate contamination throughout the supply chain. The directive applied to spices headed overseas. No equivalent framework was introduced for spices consumed within India.

Japan banned Indian mangoes in 1986 for concerns over fruit-fly infestation. This ban lasted for twenty years. When it was lifted in 2006, it was because we implemented the treatment, inspection and quarantine systems built to address that concern, resulting in Indian mango breeds like Kesar, Alphonso, Langra, Banganapalli, entering Japanese markets again. This too lasted for nearly two decades. But earlier this year, the Japanese inspection team found problems with those systems, and exports were shut down again.

Sources told The Secretariat that both APEDA and the National Plant Protection Organisation, both formally responsible for monitoring export readiness, failed to make timely interventions. The government sought explanations, but for exporters, the season ended with the ban in place. 

What links these episodes is the shape of the response. A foreign market raises a concern, Indian exporters and official bodies mobilise, testing protocols are sharpened, and the conversation about standards becomes urgent and detailed. Then it fades into the background, until the next rejection.

What rules cover, or don't

It’s not like India does not have regulatory frameworks for pesticide residues in food materials.

The Food Safety and Standards (Contaminants, Toxins and Residues) Regulations, 2011, set maximum residue limits for a range of insecticides across food categories – chlorpyrifos, endosulfan, monocrotophos, malathion, and dozens more, with commodity-specific tolerances listed in detailed tables. 

One FSSAI order from August 2022 acknowledged that in the case of spices and culinary herbs, MRLs (Maximum Residue Limit) are not specified for most pesticides, because the ‘filed trial data’ required to set them is often absent. As a workaround, the authority directed that Codex Alimentarius standards would apply wherever available and, in their absence, MRLs from the regulatory authorities of exporting countries would be used for compliance. 

Codex Alimentarius standards are a collection of internationally recognised food safety guidelines run by the UN's WHO and FAO. They serve as the world’s ultimate blueprint for pesticide limits and food hygiene, and are heavily recommended guidelines rather than legally binding laws.

Then, in April 2024 – in the middle of the MDH-Everest crisis, notably – a revised FSSAI order raised the default MRL for pesticides in spices and culinary herbs from 0.01 mg/kg to 0.1 mg/kg, a tenfold increase. Activists and scientists quickly pointed out that no data justifying this change was released publicly. 

Amit Khurana of the Centre for Science and Environment said that a revision of this magnitude needed to be substantiated. Pesticide Action Network India also noted that the percentage of food samples found to contain pesticide residues had risen from 22.6 percent in 2018-19 to 35.9 percent in 2022-23, while government monitoring reports had not been made available to the public since 2018-19.

Chlorpyrifos is perhaps the starkest example of a double standard in how risk is assessed. 

The organophosphate insecticide, registered in India since 1977 and among the most widely used in the country, has been linked to neurodevelopmental harm, reduced birth size, and increased risk of certain cancers, and has been banned by over 40 countries.

In 2021, the European Union nominated it for global phase-out under the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, and the Convention’s scientific review committee concluded it exhibits persistence, bioaccumulation, and the capacity for long-range transport. At the Stockholm COP-12 in Geneva in April-May 2025, India opposed the proposed ban and lobbied successfully for a five-year specific exemption covering 18 crop-pest complexes, citing food security concerns and the absence of viable alternatives. FSSAI’s domestic regulations allow chlorpyrifos at 0.5 mg/kg on fruits and 0.2 mg/kg on other vegetables. The EU’s effective MRL, by contrast, sits at 0.01 mg/kg — a threshold which functions as a prohibition in practice. 

Testing infrastructure

The testing infrastructure then compounds all of this. 

Detecting pesticide residue in spice mixes – as opposed to whole spices – requires gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. Of the certified testing network, only a fraction of laboratories in India are equipped for these tests. Most government labs don’t have the necessary equipment, which means samples go to private facilities, and waiting times are long.

When FSSAI asked states to test MDH and Everest products after the 2024 Hong Kong alert, the backlog was significant: in Maharashtra alone, of 331 samples of spice powder collected over a 12-month period, only 150 had been tested by mid-May. There is no routine domestic mandate for this kind of testing on spice mixes regardless. In other words, the bottleneck is both regulatory and physical.

What is ‘export quality’

The phrase appears everywhere when you go out to buy groceries – on packaging, on supplier websites, in trade communications. “Export quality” has no formal legal standing under Indian food law, it is not a defined category in FSSAI regulations or anywhere else in the compliance architecture. But it carries weight as a market signal, implying that the product has been through stricter scrutiny, higher tolerances, or more rigorous process controls than what ordinary domestic buyers can expect. The interesting question is whether that implication is accurate, and if so, what exactly it reveals.

When Indian spices go to the EU, exporters must comply with an MRL of 0.02 mg/kg for ethylene oxide on chilli; when the same spices are sold within India, there is no mandatory test for EtO at all. When mangoes are sent to Japan, they pass through a vapour heat treatment protocol inspected by Japanese quarantine officials before the season begins; when they go to the US, documentation of the treatment chain is checked at the border. No equivalent pre-sale verification exists for domestic sales.

Taken together, these reflect a structural reality - that the demand for evidence of safety is largely externally generated, and the systems that produce that evidence are calibrated to satisfy foreign buyers.

What tends to follow each export rejection is a conversation that looks like the conversation that should already be happening for domestic food safety. 

India's agricultural exports grew from $34.5 billion in 2019-20 to $51.1 billion in 2024-25. The government’s stated ambition is a larger share of global trade. Currently, India accounts for less than 3 percent despite holding the second-largest agricultural land area in the world. There is real economic logic to wanting foreign markets to trust Indian produce, and the compliance infrastructure this ambition generates is not without value. 

None of the testing, traceability work, or documentation discipline that export markets demand is wasted effort. Which is precisely what makes the question unavoidable.

If stricter standards, testing and traceability are necessary for products destined for consumers overseas, why are they not equally necessary for Indian consumers? And if they are — as they must be — then where is the compliance infrastructure?

Complaining about the media is easy. Why not do something to make it better? Support independent media and subscribe to Newslaundry today.