IPPC Standards Committee welcomes new members, lauds work of technical panels

Rome, 30 June 2021. The Standards Committee (SC) of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) met virtually on 23-24 June with new SC members to address standing agenda items during its annual meeting. Opening the focus sessions, the SC acknowledged the long-term contributions of Andrei Orlinski, representative of the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), and the stewardship term of Laurence Bouhot-Delduc, France’s representative, on the Technical Panel for the Glossary (TPG). The SC also welcomed Olga Lavrentjeva, Estonia’s representative, as the new TPG steward beginning in June 2021 and renewed the membership of Robert Taylor, expert for bacteriology and backup for mycology from New Zealand, to a second term on the Technical Panel on Diagnostic Protocols (TPDP).

Additionally, the SC reviewed, updated, and discussed the status of the Technical Panel on Phytosanitary Treatments (TPPT), the newly approved Technical Panel on Commodity Standards (TPCS), new approaches to the List of Topics for IPPC Standards (LOT), proposals for the Implementation Review and Support System (IRSS), and noted the updates from the CPM Bureau and the Standard Setting Unit of the IPPC Secretariat.

In particular, the SC agreed to issue a Call for Experts and to draft a proposal to allow phytosanitary treatments to undergo only one consultation period on a case-by-case basis if no substantive comments arise. Another Call for Experts is also planned for the 4th quarter of 2021 to establish a Technical Panel on Commodity Standards, pending the adoption of the over-arching commodity standards and the inclusion of commodity topics to be addressed by the 16th Session of the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (CPM-16) scheduled for April 2022. Regarding the LOT, a small group of SC members will analyze and identify those topics that have not been developed for a long time and then update or recommend to the CPM to remove them from the list.

Advancing the agenda, the SC noted that in 2021 there would be 16 draft International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures (ISPMs) for consultation with one draft diagnostic protocol and one draft phytosanitary treatment for the first consultation, and five draft phytosanitary treatments for the second consultation, as well as one draft specification, and one draft CPM recommendation for the consultation period. The SC was invited to propose topics for the IRSS studies and surveys through the Call for Topics and to note updates from the CPM Bureau and the Standard Setting Unit of the IPPC Secretariat.

The next SC meeting will be a focused meeting on 13–14 July 2021 in a virtual mode.

More information is available at the IPPC Consultations webpage: https://www.ippc.int/en/standards/consultations/

The June SC focused meeting report will be available at: https://www.ippc.int/en/core-activities/standards-setting/standards-committee/