Paving a new direction to plant health standards: the IPPC Technical Panel on Commodity Standards

Rome, 31 May 2022. Setting a new direction to the plant health community on developing commodity-specific standards for phytosanitary measures, the newly established Technical Panel on Commodity Standards (TPCS) of the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) held its first virtual meeting.

The meeting, in virtual modality, was convened to have the first group contact, to present the standard setting procedure and discuss the timeline for the next steps to the TPCS members. The ten experts (TPCS members) and the SC Steward (Samuel Bishop, UK), SC Assistant Steward (Joanne Wilson, New Zealand), SC Chairperson Sophie Peterson (Australia), as well as the IPPC Secretariat technical officers (Adriana Moreira and Erika Mangili) for this topic, had the opportunity to engage each other to advance the work.

The Standard Setting Unit (SSU) lead, Avetik Nersisyan, gave the opening remarks, emphasizing the importance of the TPCS work and the promising expectations towards the commodity standards. “It is an IPPC milestone being implemented with the first meeting of the TPCS. It is exciting to see this new direction for the IPPC standards and trade negotiations with the TPCS members with their great expertise and experience. The work on specific commodity standards will definitely provide all countries with the same level of information and access to any potential new markets”, said Adriana G. Moreira, IPPC Standard Setting Officer.

One of the eight development agenda items of the IPPC Strategic Framework 2020-2030, the specific commodity standards aims to facilitate and accelerate trade negotiations and simplified safe trade in plant products through harmonized phytosanitary measures. Among other plans, the TPCS main task is to develop an annex on International movement of mango (Mangifera indica) fruit to the ISPM 46 (Commodity-specific standards for phytosanitary measures), which was recently adopted at the 16th Session of the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (CPM-16).

The planned SC activities for the next meetings will be available on the IPPC Calendar web page: https://www.ippc.int/en/year/calendar/

More information about the panel and its members is available on the IPPC TPCS web page: https://www.ippc.int/en/core-activities/standards-setting/expert-drafting-groups/technical-panels/technical-panel-on-commodity-standards/. The meeting report will soon be posted on this webpage.