The first informal virtual meeting of the IPPC Standards Committee to ensure the continuity of its activities

Rome, 14 July 2020. The IPPC Secretariat organized the first informal virtual meeting of the IPPC Standards Committee (SC). The SC have continued to work virtually since their annual face-to-face meeting in May was cancelled due to the COVID-19 global crisis. The meeting was to brief the SC on general updates from the IPPC Secretariat, CPM Bureau decisions and to discuss the plan for the next steps in relation to the Commodity Standards and the reorganization of Pest Risk Analysis (PRA) standards. The SC also discussed the topic on authorization of entities to perform phytosanitary actions and the tentative webinar on this theme.

Eighteen SC members joined the call to discuss the aforementioned topics. The SC made recommendations on the stewards and assistants nominations for the Technical Panel on Commodity Standards and the draft ISPM on Commodity-based standards for phytosanitary measures. The SC noted that the stewards would be to address country comments on the overarching concept standard submitted for the first round of consultations in 2020, and additional SC members could steward the development of standard for individual commodities once they are in the work programme.

No formal decisions were taken during this meeting, but the SC invited the IPPC Secretariat to open an eDecision for the SC to formally decide on the stewards and to continue the discussions in relation to the reorganization of PRA standards. The next virtual meeting of the SC is planned for the second half of September 2020.

The report of the SC virtual meeting is now availble on the IPP at: https://www.ippc.int/en/core-activities/standards-setting/standards-committee/