Overview
Prohibiting parts of the commodity that may carry pests.
- Examples include debarking for wood and wood products, removing leaves, twigs, and other plant parts from horticultural products, and requiring plants for planting to be bare-rooted (with associated soil removed) or traded as dormant budwood.
- Evaluating the efficacy of this measure requires knowledge of the biology of the pest, and evidence that removing specific parts will reduce infestation rates in the commodity.
- This approach is most effective when pests are closely associated with parts of the commodity that can be easily removed. It is often applied as a standard phytosanitary requirement, for example, to de-bark wood.
- Assurance can be achieved through record-keeping and audit of processing records. Compliance with any processing requirements can be assessed at a pre-border inspection by authorised personnel, with oversight by the NPPO or relevant authority of the exporting jurisdiction.
Evidence to support efficacy
Evaluating the efficacy of this measure requires knowledge of the biology of the pest, especially as it relates to how life stages that can result in establishment are distributed within the commodity or carrier. Experiments with infested commodities can be used to demonstrate the efficacy of any removal technique to a specific confidence level, which can be confirmed in an operational setting.
Applying the measure
How it is used
This measure is often used when the parts of the commodity that are most likely to be infested can be readily removed. For example, debarking of timber to manage the risk of beetle borers, the removal of plant stems and leaves from horticultural produce, such as decrowning of pineapples, to manage the risk of pests that are most closely associated with those plant parts, and bare-rooting of plants to remove pests and diseases that can be transmitted in soil. These measures can be applied as a general requirement if the prohibited parts are a host or carrier of diverse pests.
Use with other measures
Can be combined with other measures such as surface cleaning when the pest is not entirely restricted to the removed part.
Similar measures
This measure is similar to the remove contaminants measure although in this case the focus is on removing parts of the commodity, rather than contaminants.
Assurance of correct implementation
Assurance can be achieved by record keeping of any processing activities that are required. These records may be audited by authorised personnel, with oversight by the NPPO or relevant authority of the exporting country, at an appropriate interval. Compliance with any requirements may be confirmed through pre-border inspection by authorised personnel, with oversight by the NPPO or relevant authority of the exporting jurisdiction.