Abstract: In recent years, China’s export of vegetable products to the European Union (EU) has been affected by technical measures to trade due to the differences between the methods and standards used for the determination of pesticide residues in China and the EU. In this paper, we analyze China’s export stumble cases, aiming to find the differences in the number of methods used for pesticide residue determination, the technical details of vegetable detection and the quality control of the standard methods between the country and the EU. Our focus is on the differences between the analytical methods used for typical exported vegetable products in China and the EU. Furthermore, we put forward some countermeasures including integrating the current methods and standards, improving the efficiency of sample pretreatment as well as the precision and sensitivity of the methods, and further standardizing the quality control of the methods.

Key words: China and the European Union, vegetables, pesticide residues, determination method standards, technical measures to trade