Sino-Norwegian workshop on pesticide monitoring for food safety and mitigation of soil and water pollution

With fast economic development in China during the past two to three decades, environmental pollution, in particular to soil and drinking water caused by extensive application of fertilizers and pesticides, and food safety problems have becoming serious challenges across the whole country. The Chinese government has recently launched the 13th 5-year plan (2016-2020) with a strong focus on reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides to the minimum level to secure food safety and protect the environment. These problems can unlikely be solved by China alone and international collaboration, in particular European experience in food safety and environmentally friendly food crop production, is welcomed by Chinese academia and research organizations. Norway has over four decades? experience in developing good agricultural and governance practice to protect the environment as well as an effective surveillance system to monitor pesticides in the environment. Norwegian experience and expertise can be shared with China through a joint workshop. A NIBIO-CAAS (Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) workshop on pesticide monitoring for food safety and mitigation of soil and water pollutions will be held on 1-2 September 2016 at NIBIO, Ås, Norway. The goal of this workshop focuses on exchange of knowledge and experience from both sides on reducing pesticide application and developing sustainable food production. This workshop brings together not only scientists from CAAS and NIBIO but also farmers from Norway (Bondelag), the food inspection authority (Mattilsynet), the Norwegian Scientific Adversary Board for Food safety (VKM) and industrial partners to demonstrate and share Norwegian experience on governance and strategies for achieving good agricultural practice with food safety and environmental protection as the focuses. This workshop is of important NIBIO China collaboration.