27^th Meeting of the Panel on Quarantine Pests for Forestry

Paris, 2022-10-04/05

The EPPO Panel on Quarantine Pests for Forestry met on 2022-10-04/05 in Paris. The scope of this Panel covers risk assessment and management to prevent the introduction and spread of quarantine pests of forest trees to support NPPOs in their work.

The Panel members discussed the EPPO Guidance for the use of pest free production site, pest free place of production and pest freedom of the crop in the risk management options in EPPO recommendations. The Panel also discussed the implementation of the concept of place of production and production site in relation to management of quarantine pests in forestry. It was concluded that in forestry and with forest products such as wood, these concepts are not applied but phytosanitary measures are taken either at the country or area level or at the level of consignments (e.g. country free from a pest or treatment of wood products).

The Panel members worked on the EPPO discussion document on commodity-specific phytosanitary measures for forest tree genera. The main aim of this document is to harmonize the use of terminology and to achieve consistency in the proposed measures in the EPPO Pest Risk Analysis (PRA) documents and related PM8 Standards. The Panel then discussed the draft revision of the EPPO Standard PM 8/11 Commodity-specific phytosanitary measures (Fraxinus). The draft revision will be further discussed and finalized at the next meeting of the Panel.

Members of the Panel updated colleagues on news of forestry pests and their control (including biological control) in their countries.

The meeting of the Panel on Quarantine Pests for Forestry was followed by a Joint meeting with the Panel on Phytosanitary Measures on 2022-10-05 to discuss aspects of common interest e.g. drafting of Guidelines for PRA expert working groups and Panels when recommending risk management measures for forest pests and links between Standards in the series PM 8 Commodity-specific phytosanitary measures and EPPO PRA.

The next meeting of Panel will be held in autumn 2023.

The composition of the EPPO Panel on Quarantine Pests for Forestry can be found on the EPPO website.