General Guidelines for Risk Analysis Relative to Plant Protection and Quarantine

General Guidelines

The WTO/SPS Agreement encourages WTO members to base their sanitary measures on international standards, guidelines and recommendations. Members may choose to adopt a higher level of protection than that provided by international texts if there is a scientific justification or if the level of protection provided by the relevant international texts is considered inappropriate. The SPS Agreement encourages governments to make wider use of risk assessment.

Stage 1: Initiating the Pest Risk Analysis (PRA) Process

There are generally two initiation points for a pest risk analysis:

• The identification of a pathway, usually an imported commodity, that may allow the introduction and/or spread of quarantine pests.
• The identification of a pest that may qualify as a quarantine pest.

Prior to proceeding with a new PRA, assessors should check whether the pathway or pest has already been evaluated or assessed. If a PRA exists, its validity should be checked, as circumstances may have changed.

Stage 2: Pest Risk Assessment

During Stage 2, assessors consider pests individually. For each pest, they must determine whether the criteria for quarantine pest status are satisfied:

Is it a pest of potential economic importance to the area endangered thereby and not yet present there, or present but not widely distributed and being officially controlled?

In examining whether the criteria are satisfied, the Pest Risk Assessment considers information about the pest's geographical distribution, biology and economic importance. For potential economic importance to be expressed, a pest must become established and spread. Thus the risk of a pest, having entered, becoming established and spreading in the PRA area must be characterized.

Deciding whether to proceed. If the pest satisfies the definition of a quarantine pest, expert judgment should be used to review the information collected during Stage 2 to decide whether the pest has sufficient economic importance and introduction potential (i.e. sufficient risk) for phytosanitary measures to be justified. If so, that analysis proceeds to Stage 3; if not, the PRA for the pest stops at this point.

Stage 3: Pest Risk Management

Pest risk management---those measures identified to mitigate the risk or protect the endangered areas---should be directly related to the risk identified in the risk assessment and should be based on the information gathered during the assessment. SPS measures should not be more trade-restrictive than necessary to achieve their appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection, taking into account technical and economic feasibility.

After the appropriate phytosanitary measures concerning the pest or pathway have been decided upon and implemented, their effectiveness should be monitored and the risk management options should be reviewed, if necessary.

Members of the WTO should, when determining the appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection, take into account the objective of minimizing negative trade effects.

Finally, a PRA should be sufficiently documented so that when a review or dispute arises, the PRA will clearly state the sources of information and the rationales used in reaching a management decision regarding phytosanitary measures taken or to be taken.