• Home
• Lessons
  • 1. Review of PRA and Introduction to Risk Assessment
  • 2. Resources Used to Conduct Pest Risk Assessment
  • 3. Conducting Pest Risk Assessment for Trade
  • 4. Practice
  • 5. Module Conclusion
• Topics
  • 1. Why is Pest Risk Assessment Important?
  • 2. Risk Assessment and PRA
  • 3. The International Framework for PRA and Pest Risk Assessment
  • 4. Common Approaches for Conducting Pest Risk Assessment
• Resources
  • Help
  • Glossary
  • Documents and Videos
  • Acknowledgements

Lesson 1: Review of PRA and Introduction to Risk Assessment

Topic 1: Why is Pest Risk Assessment Important?

Countries gain many benefits by participating in the free trade of agricultural commodities. For example, the food security of a nation will increase as its citizens gain greater access to a wider diversity of agricultural products that are available year round, often at lower prices. Another benefit is the economic growth experienced as growers and producers gain easier access to international markets. Unfortunately, the movement of agricultural products can also lead to the introduction and spread of plant pests and diseases that can be very costly to control, and in some cases, can devastate natural environments. In order to minimize the risk posed by such hazards, countries often require that phytosanitary measures be put in place before products that may serve as a pathway for the introduction of quarantine pests and diseases are allowed to enter that country. However, if phytosanitary measures are too stringent, they will cancel out the benefits gained from free trade. For this reason, it is essential that countries accurately identify and characterize the risks associated with trade.

By their nature, phytosanitary measures restrict trade. As you learned in previous modules, the SPS Agreement aims to establish rules that let countries provide an appropriate level of phytosanitary protection without creating unnecessary barriers to international trade.

The SPS Agreement defines appropriate level of sanitary or phytosanitary protection as “the level of protection deemed appropriate by the Member establishing a sanitary or phytosanitary measure to protect human, animal or plant life or health within its territory.” This concept is also referred to as “the acceptable level of risk.” The basic premise of the SPS Agreement is that phytosanitary measures should be just strong enough to protect plant resources from the risk associated with introduced plant pests, but they should not be so strong that they are used as an artificial barrier to trade. In other words, according to the SPS Agreement, there should be a rational relationship between the actual risk and the strength of measures required.

According to the SPS Agreement, countries must justify any phytosanitary measures with an assessment of the phytosanitary risks that takes into account:

• Scientific evidence
• Relevant processes and production methods
• Prevalence of diseases and pests
• Existence of pest- or disease-free areas
• Relevant ecological and environmental conditions
• Quarantine and other treatments
• Potential damage due to loss of production or sales in the event of pest entry and spread
• Cost of control or eradiation of a pest
• Relative cost effectiveness of alternative approaches to limiting risks

According to the SPS Agreement, all phytosanitary measures must be based on scientific evidence and be technically justified. As you have already learned, pest risk analysis, or PRA, is the internationally agreed-upon process a country uses to determine the phytosanitary measures necessary to reach its acceptable level risk or its appropriate level of protection. The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) defines PRA as “the process of evaluating biological or other scientific and economic evidence to determine whether an organism is a pest, whether it should be regulated, and the strength of any phytosanitary measures to be taken against it.” [FAO, 1995; revised IPPC, 1997; ISPM 2:2007]

But how do countries determine whether the organisms associated with a particular commodity are pests? Once they determine an organism is a pest, how do countries then decide whether the level of risk associated with that organism is acceptable? And if they decide the risk is not acceptable, how should they determine how strong the mitigation measures should be?

In other words, how can countries take advantage of and maintain the benefits of free trade while also minimizing the costs associated with the introduction and spread of quarantine pests? By now, you may have realized that each of these questions can only be answered if countries first have an accurate understanding of what the risks might be, as well as the magnitude of those risks. This can only be accomplished through pest risk assessment.

To continue, select Topic 2 from the Topics menu above or click here.