The Pesticides Manufacturers? and Formulators Association of India (PMFAI) has highlighted several issues concerning the generic pesticides producers on FAO and WHO specifications.

FAO and WHO define guidelines for pesticide specifications for member states concerning the approval of products to be brought to market. These guidelines are used by all the member countries governments to assess chemical equivalence of generic pesticides with the original registrant and treated as international standards for generic pesticides.font>

In a letter to the Department of Chemicals and Petrochemicals (DCPC), PMFAI listed the issues concerning the generic pesticides producers on FAO and WHO specifications as:

1.These international standards contain information that is kept secret.
2.The information in these international standards is claimed as intellectual property by individual companies.
3.The international standards are set by a single company which can change them without broad consultation or scrutiny.
4.The international standards can be "captured" by a single company.
5."Conformity assessment" to the international standard can only be performed by the JMPS, which creates a monopoly and a severe bottleneck.
6.The international standards constitute technical barriers to trade that can be challenged by WTO member states toward other member states that implement such barriers to market access procedures, such as registrations. Therefore, FAO and WHO induce member states to enter into potential WTO conflicts.

This new FAO/WHO guideline, namely the Manual on development and Use of Specifications of Pesticides, was termed by PMFAI as "very damaging for the generic industry".

According to PMFAI, intellectual property rights based on patents regarding TRIPS of WTO are enough protection to justify research of multinationals. These international standards will give protection to the out of patent pesticides.