Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 5 • Number 7 • 15th April 2005

Regionalisation Identified as Top Priority by ICPM

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The need to identify regions within countries was the top priority at the 7th session of the Interim Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (ICPM) held in Rome from 4 to 8 April. The ICPM is the governing body of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), an international expert body setting plant and phytosanitary standards. Currently, trade restrictions imposed under the IPPC because of the discovery of plant and animal diseases are imposed on the entire country, or trading block in the case of the EU, in which the disease is found. This has raised problems because regions within the exporting country or trading block may in fact be disease and pest-free. Late or no recognition of this fact, due to the absence of provisions for recognising regions within or across national borders in the IPPC, may result in export bans being imposed where they are unnecessary or for longer than is required. The need to develop new procedures for recognising regions has been debated extensively in the WTO Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (see Bridges Weekly, 16 March 2005) and the ICPM decided to convene a working group during the meeting to identify possible ways to recognise disease free regions. The working group’s report called for standards and guidelines for the recognition of pest free regions to be “urgently developed”, a process that will start with a meeting of the Standards Committee of IPPC on 25 April.

The 8th session of ICPM is scheduled for March 27-31 2006.

For more information visit https://www.ippc.int/id/37390

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