REPORT ON EXPERT CONSULTATION ON PLANT QUARANTINE HARMONIZATION / P.4
6. Pest Risk Assessment
6.1
There was agreement that quarantine pests needed to be subjected to regulation. There were conflicting opinions concerning whether or not other categories of pests needed to be regulated also.
6.2
In order to place a "pest" in its proper category, it was agreed that the biological impact of the pest in the importing country (region) needed to be determined. It was also proposed that an economic impact analysis also was required to categorize quarantine pests but there is no guideline on how to do this in the revised IPPC.
6.3
The need for adequate information to conduct both the biological and economic impact analyses was pointed out. This information is frequently not readily accessible/available. The need for a system to access and share information stored in various databanks was pointed out.
6.4
It was agreed that pests that could travel along natural pathways could not be prevented from spreading by plant quarantine action. Thus, such pests, while they may be serious pests of our crops, cannot be prevented from spreading and thus there will be no benefit from quarantine actions.
6.5
The group, agreed that procedures which were available that could reduce risks to acceptable levels needed to be considered in the PRA process to be able to arrive at a final PRA risk determination.
7.
8.
Implication of the GATT draft text for the Framework of an Agreement on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures
The Expert Consultation had expressed deep concern over the GATT draft text as there would be in existence two international documents having some similar (but also some opposing) obligations; one agreement would be derived from a trade perspective and the other from a plant quarantine perspective. The Consultation had examined the draft text in details and produced a report (Annex IV) for forwarding to GATT through FAO.
Implementation of International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC)
8.1
Mr. Bousquet, Legal Officer from FAO, also explained the present situation of Amendment to the IPPC. Ninety-five states are parties to the Convention and Instruments of acceptance of the Revised Text have been received from 51 contracting parties.
As a result,
13 acceptances are still necessary for the Revised Text to become operative. He also urged countries which were not members of the IPPC, but were members of the APPPC to adhere to IPPC.
P.T.0.