EPPO Workshop on eradication, containment
and contingency planning

NPPOs face the challenge of how to respond rapidly and effectively to pest outbreaks. Often they are successful and succeed in eradicating the pest. Sometimes it takes more time and resources than first anticipated and in certain cases the original objectives of the eradication campaign may need to be reviewed.
Many EPPO members are developing contingency plans for pests which may cause a major economic and/or environmental impact. EPPO responded to this trend by developing the standard Generic elements for contingency plans. Also new standards for important pests are developed in the series PM 9 National regulatory control systems. This should facilitate EPPO members to draft their own pest specific contingency plans.
The increased emphasis on eradication and contingency planning in EPPO’s work programme should also contribute to the EU project PRATIQUE, in particular the task to develop a decision support system for the eradication and containment of pest outbreaks (WP5). In order to collect and exchange experiences with eradication a workshop was organized for those who are involved in eradication campaigns or contingency planning in their country. Participants considered also whether the new EPPO standard on contingency plans is complete in listing all important generic elements which should be part of a contingency plan.  

Fifty two experts from 25 countries participated in the workshop. Several experts involved in PRATIQUE-WP5 also participated in the workshop, which provided an excellent opportunity to exchange experiences of risk managers and scientists, and to discuss the necessary tools to support them in eradication campaigns. The EPPO Secretariat and participants are very grateful for the excellent arrangements, prepared by the Slovenian plant protection service, in particular Vlasta Knapic, Alenka Grivec and Gabrijel Slejak.

   

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On the first day of the workshop many participants gave a presentation of specific experiences they have in their country with eradication. In total 17 cases were presented and discussed (and in addition the relevant standards and the project PRATIQUE were presented).
The next two days were dedicated to the study and discussion of four cases of eradication: Anoplophora chinensis & A. glabripennis, Dryocosmus kuriphilus (including a field trip to see the practical difficulties of eradication), Diabrotica virgifera virgifera and Erwinia amylovora. The exchange of experiences on a large number of eradication cases and the detailed discussion of the 4 specific cases provided substantial material from which to list the main critical factors for successful eradication. These factors can be categorized as follows: biological factors; cost/benefit factors; and operational factors.

Biological factors
Workshop participants stressed that preventing the introduction of new pests should be the first priority, particularly concerning plants for planting. Several biological factors were considered critical for which the general information is available but which need to be specified for the location of the outbreak. Among these were: life cycle, optimal flying period, preferred hosts and minor hosts, effect of population density of the pest or host.
Detection of the pest is essential to initiate eradication measures. In that respect there are uncertainties regarding the reliability of testing, detection, and trapping methods and several aspects in that regard were discussed in detail.
Although the focus of the workshop was on eradication, changing the objective to containment was also discussed. It was noted that there is limited experience regarding the efficacy of containment measures and often the proposed containment measures only slow down the spread of the pest.