Lesson 1: What is a Pest-Free Area?
Topic 2: Advantages to Declaring a Pest-Free Area
There are many advantages to having a PFA, if it is appropriate for your circumstances. In this topic, we will illustrate how a PFA can positively affect import and export of plant-based agricultural commodities.
Objective:
- Participants will be able to list the advantages for creating and maintaining a PFA.
There are many ways to manage pest risks, and as you saw in the earlier example, it may seem laborious to establish and maintain a PFA. However, there are advantages to creating and maintaining areas free of pests, as a PFA is beneficial in regulating commodities for both export and import, as you will see below.
Export benefits: It may be possible to use a PFA as an alternative to a systems approach for pest risk management. Remember, a systems approach is a method that utilizes and combines more than one management measure for managing pest risks in traded plants or plant products. A true systems approach enacts at least two measures that act independently but together achieve an appropriate level of protection against regulated pests on a regulated pathway (ISPM 14, 2002). In certain circumstances, a country with an established PFA can export plant commodities to another country as a stand-alone measure without applying additional phytosanitary measures. Eliminating the need for additional phytosanitary measures can make exporting more efficient and cost-effective.
Pest-free status can also be used as a basis for phytosanitary certification of plants and other plant products.
Import benefits: For imported plant commodities, a PFA adds strong justification to require phytosanitary measures by the importing country. When importing countries require phytosanitary measures before accepting imported goods, some countries may disagree with the necessity of such requirements for their commodities. However, if an importing country currently maintains a PFA for the pests associated with those commodities, then that country has strong justification for taking action and requiring rigorous phytosanitary measures for any plant or plant product that may threaten their pest-free status. The pest-free status is a supportable argument to settle this type of disagreement.
For example, countries sometimes disagree with the U.S. treatment requirements for imports that may carry Bactrocera dorsalis (Oriental fruit fly) because they believe the U.S. already has this fruit fly. However, the U.S. response is based on evidence that B. dorsalis is only established in Hawaii, an island state not connected to the U.S. mainland. The rest of the U.S. is a PFA for B. dorsalis; therefore, they have strong justification for requiring treatment to continue keeping oriental fruit fly out of the country. Watch the following video to see another example of using PFA status within the larger pest risk analysis framework.
In this topic, you learned about the benefits of using PFA as a phytosanitary security measure both from an export and import point of view. The next lesson will focus on the principles for creating and operating a PFA.
To continue, select Lesson 2 from the Lessons menu above or click here.