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)
PRATIQUE project is still at too early a phase for concrete outcomes to be considered in this
evaluation 181 .
Other relevant responses from the stakeholders interviewed were:
Availability of relevant data limits PRAs and this is considered a permanent problem;
Development of full PRAs at EFSA takes too much time in general and this delay should be
shortened;
The PRA process per se is becoming increasingly complex and this could be detrimental to
plant health safety in Europe. Managers and decision makers want more and more details to
back up their decisions. They want to reduce uncertainties that are always present in the
biological field and there needs to be a better balance between a need for more information
and timely decision-making and action;
In ISPM 5, the definition of quarantine pest is connected to the level of acceptable risk (the
pest becomes subject to quarantine when the risk is not acceptable). This is left to the risk
management options, which are not within the remit of EFSA because the economic factor is
missing from EFSA‘s assessment;
There needs to be more coordination and collaboration between all organizations involved in
conducting PRAs, i.e. between the EU/EFSA, EPPO and MS. The ultimate objective
remains common: phytosanitary protection within the EU. The coordination between EFSA
and EPPO seems to be improving with discussions that are ongoing between these two
organisations and a better communication scheme is established, and these efforts need to
continue in future.
3.9.1.5 Conclusions
The number of HOs arriving and spreading within the EU is expected to increase in the coming
years mainly due to globalisation trends and climate change. Against these trends, it is
recognised that the R&D expertise in plant health is declining in the majority of the most
important disciplines required for this sector (taxonomy, entomology, diagnosis, etc.), leading to
the need to further coordinate R&D activities at EU level. In this context, the use of existing EU
181 PRATIQUE is an EC funded 7th Framework research project designed to address the major challenges for pest
risk analysis (PRA) in Europe. This project is intended to develop sustainable, integrated plant health management
strategies and enhance effective policy and decision-making by better assessing and managing plant health risks. It
has three main objectives:
To assemble the datasets required to construct PRAs valid for the whole of the EU;
To conduct multidisciplinary research that enhances the techniques used in PRA; and
To provide a decision support scheme for PRA that is efficient and user-friendly.
The research is undertaken by scientists from 13 institutes in the EU and one each from Australia and New Zealand
with subcontractors from institutes in China and Russia. It will produce a structured inventory of PRA datasets for
the EU and undertake targeted research to improve existing procedures and develop new methods for (a) the
assessment of economic, environmental and social impacts, (b) summarizing risk while taking account of
uncertainty, (c) mapping endangered areas (d) pathway risk analysis and systems approaches and (e) guiding actions
during emergencies caused by outbreaks of harmful organisms.
The results will be tested and provided as protocols, decision support systems and computer programs with
examples of best practice linked to a computerized EPPO PRA scheme.
Food Chain Evaluation Consortium 163