UN Issues New Standards to Curb Spread of Xylella

At a recent meet­ing in Rome, the inter­na­tional body respon­si­ble for pre­vent­ing the spread of dis­eases and imple­ment­ing safe plant trad­ing prac­tices met to adopt new stan­dards meant to curb the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa, as well as five other pest-borne dis­eases.

The stan­dards that the Commission on Phytosanitary Measures (CPM) agreed to imple­ment included pro­to­cols to block the spread of inva­sive pests, such as the olive fruit fly, from cross­ing inter­na­tional bor­ders.

“With increased trade and travel, the risks of plant pests spread­ing into new areas across bor­ders is now higher than ever before,” Bukar Tijani, the assis­tant direc­tor gen­eral of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department, told the gath­er­ing.

“Each day, we wit­ness a shock­ing num­ber of threats to the well-being of our plants and, by exten­sion, to our health, envi­ron­ment and econ­omy,” he added.

The FAO, which runs the com­mis­sion, esti­mates that Xylella fas­tidiosa has been respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of hun­dreds of thou­sands of acres of olive trees across the Americas, Europe and Asia.

In Italy alone, it is esti­mated that the dis­ease has destroyed 445,000 acres of olive trees, cost­ing mil­lions of Euros of dam­age. Xylella fas­tidiosa has also infected olive trees in both Spain’s Balearic Islands and France. The dis­ease has also been iden­ti­fied on Spain’s main­land, but so far only in almond and cherry trees.

According to a study recently released by the University of Málaga, there is also con­cern that the dis­ease could spread to Africa, Australia and parts of East Asia as well.

Overall, the FAO esti­mates that between 20 and 40 per­cent of annual global crop pro­duc­tion is lost to pests. This, along with other plant dis­eases, costs the global econ­omy about $290 bil­lion each year.

“Many farm­ers and gov­ern­ments grap­ple with ward­ing off highly destruc­tive pests and dis­eases that are — on top of every­thing else — also new to them,” Tijani said.

The new stan­dards, which will be adopted by the CPM and their sub­com­mit­tee in charge of set­ting and imple­ment­ing global phy­tosan­i­tary stan­dards, the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), included set­ting uni­ver­sal guid­ances on the use of fumi­ga­tion; imple­ment­ing diag­nos­tic pro­to­cols for cor­rectly iden­ti­fy­ing inva­sive plant pathogens and react­ing accord­ingly; set­ting stan­dard ground rules for inter­na­tional trade in agri­cul­tural goods; devel­op­ing new tech­nolo­gies to more effec­tively screen plants and plant prod­ucts for dis­eases; and reduc­ing the risk of trans­port­ing plant pests via sea con­tain­ers.

However, the FAO warned that list­ing new stan­dards alone does not solve the prob­lem. Governments, farm­ers and exporters must also be will­ing to invest in imple­ment­ing solu­tions and work­ing together to pre­vent the spread of dis­eases, such as Xylella fas­tidiosa.

To high­light the per­va­sive prob­lem of inva­sive pests in the global food sup­ply chain, the U.N. General Assembly announced that 2020 will be the inter­na­tional year of plant health.

“Despite the increas­ing impact of plant pests, resources are scarce to address the prob­lem,” Jingyuan Xia, IPPC’s Secretary, said ​“The CPM meet­ing will dis­cuss how the inter­na­tional year of plant health could trig­ger greater global col­lab­o­ra­tion, engage­ment and aware­ness to sup­port plant health poli­cies at all lev­els.”

In the spirit of announce­ment, Angelo Annese, the mayor of Monopoli, a town in Italy’s south­ern region of Puglia that has been com­bat­ing the spread of the dis­ease for more than a year, pledged €40,000 ($44,900) to com­bat Xylella fas­tidiosa on Friday.

“Public and pri­vate enti­ties are obliged to take strate­gic action to com­bat the devel­op­ment of the insect pop­u­la­tion by adopt­ing the most suit­able phy­tosan­i­tary mea­sures,” Sante Scarafino, a spokesman for the city coun­cil said in a state­ment.

• FAO


• City Council of Monopoli