Quarantine: an important control measure for preventing new pest problems

For a good quarantine system it is required to have a quarantine legislation and an official organization. The quarantine legislation,should specify all prohibitions and requirements for import of plants or plant material. Transparent quarantine legislation consists of:a) a list of quarantine organisms, b) a list of special requirements, listed per product, c) a list of products which require a health certificate. The required organization is the Plant Protection Service (PPS) with plant health inspectors to monitor the pest situation inside the country and to inspect imports. In this paper we describe the Dutch approach to quarantine. It is similar to the approach utilized to protect from the threat of flooding. For optimal safety you need more than one dyke. In the Netherlands we use three. The first dyke is the import inspection. The second dyke uis the so called "Phytosanitary control farms".The third dyke is the quality inspection system for propagating material. In the first dyke, plants are inspected by Plant Protection Service inspectors at the place where the consignment is unpacked. This can be done at the border but also at the importers premise. If inspection takes place at the importers premise, the importer gets special permission to bring the consignment via the most direct route to his firm. Before the inspector has done the inspection the consignment has to be kept separate and may be moved or sold. The second dyke corresponds to the phytosanitary control of farms (this dyke keeps out the water that escaped the first dyke). Some diseases are very difficult to detect at the moment of import inspection because they are present in forms difficult to detect, e.g. eggs. All firms who grow plants that have been imported are known at the district office of the Plant Protection Service. All crops at these firms are inspected each month. If at import inspection a quarantine pest was not noticed, it will be more easily detected during the farm inspection. The outbreak is then still at an early stage and eradication is relativley easy. Fortunately, we only have to rely on this dyke in rare occasions. The third dyke consists of a quality control system for propagating material of important crops grown in the Netherlands. The quality control is concerned with quality pests and diseases and also trueness to type and other physical characters. because of this system of quality control, farmers are more focused to plant pest problems. The Plant Protection Service keep an eye on (new) quarantine pests. The Netherlands quarantine system is giving best results when the exporting country also uses the three dykes system: 1: international quality control system, 2: monitoring system for pests present and 3: the export inspection by the PPS