Cocoa Facing

THE JAKARTA GLOBE
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/business/article/11696.html
March 3, 2009
Arti Ekawati

Cocoa Facing ‘

Negative Campaign’ on Quality
The head of the Agricultural Quarantine Agency on Monday lashed out at claims that Indonesian g Q g y y
cocoa exports were contaminated with pesticide residue, saying quality concerns were being used by
foreign buyers to drive down the price of the commodity.
“
Iregret these negative campaigns about the safety of Indonesia ’s
cocoa products, particularly
because most of the [
claims] lacked supporting evidence,” said Hari Priyono, secretary of the
Agricultural Quarantine Agency, on Monday.
Some foreign delegations filed complaints about Indonesian cocoa during the World Trade
Organization’s annual meeting in Geneva ,
Switzerland from Feb. 24 to Feb. 26, Hari said.
One delegation from Singapore complained in Geneva that pesticide-residue levels in Indonesian dry
cocoa kernels were higher than permitted under the city-state’s import regulations.
After examining a single sample of cocoa kernels from Makassar, South Sulawesi Province ,
the US
government placed the commodity under “
automatic detention status,” which meant shipments would
b h ld i t d l t ld f l i h id Th US th iti l i d th h d be held in storage and later sold for a lower price, he said. The authorities claimed the cocoa had
not been hygienically processed.
50 thousand tons of cocoa a
year to Singapore
Cocoa kernels from other production centers in South Sulawesi, North Sumatra, West Sumatra and
Jambi provinces were not tested, Hari said. “Critics should not generalize about the quality of all
Indonesian cocoa merely from the results of a single sample,” Hari said. y g p,
Due to quality concerns, US buyers have purchased Indonesian cocoa kernels far below market prices
in recent years.
“
At the meeting, representatives from Singapore said that the pesticide content in Indonesian cocoa
kernels was higher than 0.01 parts per million,” Hari said, adding, yet again, that the claims were not
backed by scientific evidence.
Halim Razak, chairman of the Indonesian Cacao Association, or Askindo, said that Singapore should
not question the quality of Indonesian cocoa because Indonesia had already cleared quality concerns
with Japan about two months ago.
“[At that time] Japan said [
Indonesian cocoa] was safe,” Halim said.