2454 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

Evaluation of the Community Plant Health Regime: Final Report
DG SANCO Evaluation Framework Contract Lot 3 (Food Chain)
There are differences in institutional and financial capacities between MS. HOs that are
not present in MS have not generally been actively monitored and it may be the case that
these organisms are in fact present. While inspection costs on the field or for import
consignments are transferred to private operators (traders, growers, farmers), surveillance
costs are mainly borne by NPPOs. Splitting tasks and costs between the private and public
sectors may be possible, but there would need to be some kind of incentive for producers.
Although since 2000 there is legislation on compulsory surveillance for emergency
measures and PZs (to verify that the organism is not present), there is no Community
financing and no way for the Commission to require MS to put the resources in to do this.
Although most MS carry out monitoring in emergency cases and PZs (as the above data
and feedback from the general survey demonstrate), the intensity of the effort is so variable
that in some cases it appears that some surveillance programs are put in place merely to
fulfil a formal obligation rather than to identify HOs. This impression is reinforced by the
fact that some MS consider some surveillance plans to be useless. For example, in the case
of one of the visited MS maize acreage is limited and crop rotation is used on nearly 100%
of the acreage and therefore there are no risks of Diabrotica spreading. Because the
surveillance plan is mandatory, it is implemented at the lowest possible cost. An improved
approach, therefore, would be surveillance based on risk according to individual MS (as
currently the case in the MS indicated in the above example);
The reports being produced annually by the FVO are considered of value but some lack of
reporting has been observed, apart from the fact that if a MS does not have hosts for a
particular HO it should not report. Additionally, survey reports are not harmonised (with
the exception of data collected on brown rot and ring rot). There is no obligation on
reporting format and therefore these reports are not actually being used by MS CAs
officials.
3.3.2 Other surveillance programmes
As regards other programmes of general surveillance, 20 MS CAs indicated the HOs for which
this activity is in place in their country (Q 2.6 of the general survey); the following observations
can be made:
Surveillance programmes are MS specific: the majority of combinations ‗HO - type of
plant/crop‘ subject to surveillance appear to be of particular concern to individual MS,
probably depending on the significance of the threat that the surveyed HOs represent for the
economic or environmental interests of the area surveyed.
A number of HOs are more widely surveyed across the Community, such as for instance
Potato stolbur phytoplasma, Xanthomonas (campestris and fragariae), Monilinia
fructicola, Phytophthora kernoviae, Tilletia, Anoplophora glabripennis, Liriomyza, Tuta
absoluta, Meloidogyne chitwoodi, Plum pox virus, Tomato spotted wilt virus.
The general survey results do not provide further explanation on the methodology (protocols,
frequency, etc) followed for such surveillance. From the interviews of MS CAs, it appears that
differences exist between MS also at this level. Some MS provide good examples of general
surveillance practice, and their position is that surveillance should be reinforced. The
involvement of private operators in surveillance programmes is also very variable among MS.
Food Chain Evaluation Consortium 80