China has launched a 9-month crackdown on illegal pesticides and veterinary drugs after news media exposed illegal production, distribution and use of the substances. The crackdown conducted by seven government departments is being launched this month (July 2026) and will continue through the end of March 2027, according to an official news release. The campaign includes the agriculture ministry, law enforcement and prosecutorial organizations, market regulators, and the quasi-government Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.
This is the latest of many campaigns in China to address pesticide and veterinary drug residues as food safety problems going back three decades. Shanghai-based The Paper's announcement of the latest crackdown was careful to depict illegal drugs and underground workshops as isolated incidents and problems that need to be rooted out before causing bigger problems.
The crackdown appears to have been triggered by a May 28 Chinese news media report that concentrations of the antibiotic lincomycin in pigs were 38 times the acceptable level at a swine slaughter facility in Heilongjiang Province. Lincomycin concentrations of 7700 mg/kg were discovered in a spot check conducted on May 14. The facility is owned by Wangkui Shuanghui Beidahuang Food Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Shuanghui Development, which is in turn a subsidiary of Hong Kong-based WH Group. On June 5, the Food Safety Office of the State Council announced that it gave great attention to the matter, and established a team composed of multiple departments to investigate the antibiotic incident.
The same week as the Heilongjiang report, illegal marketing of banned pesticides was highlighted in a May 25, 2026 broadcast by State-owned Central TV. Journalists contacted sellers of banned toxic pesticides who hid transactions by insisting on online payments and offline shipping, and they altered packaging to hide the manufacturer's name and address. Vendors operated near a large market for farm supplies in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan Province.
After the broadcast, the Zhengzhou City communist party committee and municipal government scurried to conduct their own inspection of pesticide manufacturers and retail outlets. They claimed to have seized 30 tons of banned or restricted pesticides and initiated 20 legal cases.
At a logistics center near the Zhengzhou market, the TV journalists discovered unmarked boxes containing phorate and isocarbophos. Back in 2018, a chemical news web site reported that China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs was about to ban these toxic pesticides. The Ministry did not ban production of these pesticides until four years later, on September 1, 2022, and the sale and use of these pesticides was not banned until September 1, 2024.
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| Boxes of phorate and isocarophos discovered by Chinese journalists. |
The journalists traveled to Xuzhou in neighboring Jiangsu Province to track down pesticides sold at the market. They found packages of phorate, phorate-carbofuran mixture, and isofenphos-methyl. Villagers told the journalists that they use the insecticides to protect their garlic and potatoes from underground pests. A shop owner told the reporters that they obtain illegal pesticides directly from a manufacturer and sell them to customers who request them specifically.
In Kunming and Nanning the journalists found sale of other banned pesticides carbofuran and omethoate, phorate labeled as "Du xin", and chlorpyrifos--allowed for use on rice but not for vegetables.
Additionally, this month's testing of food items for online delivery by China's State Administration of Market Regulation found 2.3% of 1,307 samples were noncompliant. Pesticides and veterinary drugs in chili peppers, bean sprouts, and freshwater fish were among the problems highlighted in the report.
In July 2025, Hebei Province's market regulator reported finding eggs for sale that contained concentrations of antibiotics doxycycline, enrofloxacin, and florfenicol that far exceeded allowable limits.
In December 2025, Heilongiang Province announced cases of illegal pesticide use in celery, clenbuterol in beef cattle, and the banned drug ofloxacin in eggs as examples of illegal behavior it had cracked down on last year.
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