Plant Quarantine and Inspection Guidelines

The pest prevention mission of public agricultural agencies in the United States is to protect agriculture, the environment, and its citizens from the economic and environmental harm that injurious plant pests can cause.  Satisfying this mission while, at the same time, providing for equitable and orderly domestic and international trade, is a major challenge.  The ideal pest prevention system is one that is mutually agreed to and uniformly applied.  The system must efficiently and effectively identify pest harm and assess and manage pest risk.

Mutual agreement among pest prevention officials and agencies cannot be achieved unless the functions, activities, and tasks involved in pest harm identification and pest risk assessment and management are understood.  Uniformity cannot be achieved if there are no mutually agreed upon guidelines that serve as a standard against which various systems and actions can be measured and readjusted as needed.

The current array of international, federal, and state plant pest and disease regulatory requirements varies considerably, giving rise to occasional disputes and charges of unfair trade practices.  In addition to these inconsistencies, a number of other trends create a need to increase the consistency and effectiveness of pest prevention programs.  These trends include increased responsibility of the states, rather than the federal government, to be wholly involved in the management of plant inspection and quarantine programs for both domestic and international trade; heightened awareness and concern about the adverse environmental impacts of plant pests and the resulting increased use of pesticides; the importance of pest prevention programs in facilitating commodity exports as specified in both the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT); and the frequency of breaches in existing quarantines.

Given these trends, uniformity among states becomes even more important from a federal and international standpoint.  States should evaluate their current pest prevention programs for conformity with the National Plant Board guidelines and consider modifying their programs in order to achieve uniformity with them.  The USDA should make provision for approval of state quarantine and plant health program regulations as "official control" programs.  Pests covered should include quarantine and regulated non‑quarantine pests as defined in the International Plant Protection Convention. 

In addition, the USDA should optimize federal domestic program delivery via state plant pest prevention organizations.  This can be accomplished using various agreements including 1) partnership agreements as detailed in NASDA's "Key Principles of A Cooperative Relationship" Policy Statement, 2) memoranda of understanding, and 3) contractual agreements.