DANGEROUS wood-boring pests in wood packaging material (WPM) and Violations of the International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures No 15 (ISPM 15) continue to be an expensive issue for project cargo importers and their supply chain partners, reports IHS Media.
Forest ecologist Gary Lovett is working with Houston-based WPM-Dunnage Coalition to find ways to keep the insects out of WPM and prevent them from damaging US forest lands.
Mr Lovett outlined a few crucial steps the government agencies involved with ISPM 15 inspection and enforcement can do.
First, regulations should be clear and consistently enforced across ports. Secondly, the enforcement side is to help the private sector to look for these pests themselves.
US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) need to make sure the countries that are trading partners are following the same rules that they are.
'It's very clear in the ISPM 15 regulations that countries are responsible for inspecting and auditing the facilities that treat the wood packaging material, and I think APHIS does a good job of that in the US, but it's clear that some of our trading partner countries are not doing that. Our government has to step up to take some action, either through the international treaty [the International Plant Protection Convention] or through direct action against those countries.' said Mr Lovett.
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Forest ecologist Gary Lovett is working with Houston-based WPM-Dunnage Coalition to find ways to keep the insects out of WPM and prevent them from damaging US forest lands.
Mr Lovett outlined a few crucial steps the government agencies involved with ISPM 15 inspection and enforcement can do.
First, regulations should be clear and consistently enforced across ports. Secondly, the enforcement side is to help the private sector to look for these pests themselves.
US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the US Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) need to make sure the countries that are trading partners are following the same rules that they are.
'It's very clear in the ISPM 15 regulations that countries are responsible for inspecting and auditing the facilities that treat the wood packaging material, and I think APHIS does a good job of that in the US, but it's clear that some of our trading partner countries are not doing that. Our government has to step up to take some action, either through the international treaty [the International Plant Protection Convention] or through direct action against those countries.' said Mr Lovett.
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