Plant protection products are a crucial tool in agriculture designed to control diseases, pests or weeds. Their benefits include improved crop quality, reduced fungal toxins and soil disturbance, reliable production processes and less land consumption for the same amount of agricultural products (Cooper and Dobson 2007). Most plant protection products are hazardous chemicals and classified as dangerous goods. Due to their possible risks to human and animal health and the environment, they are amongst the most strictly regulated chemicals in the world. They require a thorough evaluation by detailed studies e.g. on toxicology, eco-toxicology or efficacy before they are authorized to be placed on the market. Once authorized, they are safe if used appropriately. Of course, the evaluation is based only on the submitted data for the specific product as manufactured or supplied by the applicant or authorization holder.

Plant protection products are unique and often complex formulations that may contain a dozen or more different co-formulants from different sources. The individual characteristics of a plant protection product are critical parameters which include the purity of the active substance, the identity of solvents, emulsifiers and other co-formulants. Naturally, traders, applicants and consumers assume that products available on the market will comply with the authorized formulation and that they only consist of the components that were thoroughly evaluated during the authorization process.

Counterfeit pesticides are unknown mixtures of chemicals that have never been tested. There is no knowledge on what they contain and as a consequence, nobody knows whether they are effective or worse: how they will behave once used on crops for food and feed. They are a chemical “black box”.

The illegal trade of plant protection products is highly profitable and generates billions of Euros worldwide. According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), about 14% of the revenue from plant protection products in the EU (1.3 billion Euro in total) comes from counterfeit products (EUIPO 2017). According to a report of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), other parts of the world have comparable problems but with large disparities between different regions, some with counterfeits of up to 70% (UNICRI 2016). The global market value of plant protection products is about 45 billion Euros. So one can assume a total global revenue of illegal plant protection products of several billion Euros.

Illegal plant protection products are very difficult to detect. They are not comparable with commodities where customers may detect sub-standard quality or poorly made counterfeits with the naked eye. Illegal plant protection products can only be detected with a laboratory analysis. And even then there are only specific parameters that can be analyzed e.g. the content and nature of the active substance, selected physical and chemical parameters and a range of (toxic) impurities. Some countries with specialized laboratories may also quantify individual co-formulants. However, large molecules, polymers with a range of individual substances or natural materials can be very hard to analyze and even more so to quantify.

Public services dealing with authorization and control of plant protection products are doing their best to combat this crime. However, since not all relevant stakeholders dedicate themselves to the same extent to this problem, this can be a cumbersome task. In Germany, the illegal trade of plant protection products is a criminal offense.

Both on international and national level, there are multiple activities against the illegal trade of plant protection products in the public and private sectors. Larger companies are directing their actions against those counterfeit products that cause direct economic damages. In Germany, there has been a fruitful exchange of findings between the private and public sector regarding the illegal trade. The German Federal Office of Consumer Protection and Food Safety (BVL) has revoked 45 (parallel) trade permits due to the illegal trade of plant protection products, and as a consequence 14 different companies were banned for several years from any new permit. The regional inspection services specifically target illegal imports e.g. at sea ports and do numerous controls at regional level. The BVL leads an international network within the OECD that specifically deals with the illegal trade of plant protection products and works with an alert system to mutually inform the members about illegal shipments. The European Union has a special unit dedicated to anti-counterfeit activities that also covers plant protection products, and the European Police Office has initiated control campaigns to detect illegal plant protection products especially for imports.

The German BVL holds a Task Force that assists the Federal States with combating the illegal trade. In the future, the experts will also monitor illegal plant protection product offers on the internet. There are common working groups of inspectors both from the Federal States and the BVL on the basis of legal provisions and a code of practice. Also, German customs contacts the authorities in case of suspicious shipments.

The EU legislation has enacted the new control regulation (EU) Nr. 2017/625 that applies to plant protection products, amongst others. Hopefully, it will improve the combat against illegal trade significantly, as it explicitly provides for the mutual assistance between Member States through mutual exchange of information and cross-border inspections with narrow deadlines to react upon requests. Several working groups of experts from the Member States are preparing the implementation of this regulation. Furthermore, an OECD recommendation will introduce specific provisions for the fight against the illegal trade.

In the last 10 years, the trade patterns of plant protection products have changed. More technical active substances and less formulated products are imported from overseas. This can make import controls more complicated due to the dual or multiple use of many active substances. On the other hand, if the formulation is made in the EU, the control of all manufacturing and formulation sites of plant protection products gain importance, which is also a requirement of the new regulation on controls. Internet trade is growing continuously at the expense of conventional “brick and mortar” business. This complicates the search for illegal plant protection products at wholesale and retail and profoundly changes the function of inspection services. The latter will have to shift their focus on monitoring the increasing offers of plant protection products on the internet. Buying plant protection products online also adds responsibility upon the customers, regardless if they are retailers or end users, as they knowingly avoid the face-to-face advice from conventional shops. This trend makes the control of the trade “bottlenecks” for imports (sea ports, airports, land border posts) even more important. Also, it increases the importance to have customs services committed to support the inspection services in their task of combating the illegal trade.

In future, all relevant stakeholders will have to work together even more and reach out to as many other public and private institutions as possible in order to convince them of the important task of fighting the illegal trade of plant protection products. Public services must protect farmers, users, authorization holders and consumers from the threat caused by counterfeiters and smugglers of chemicals and stop the benefits of their illegal business.