On Wednesday 23 July, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) announced that it had completed an assessment of 47 quarantine pests as part of a major scientific review. This work will be used by the European Commission to update the EU’s list of quarantine pests qualifying as priority pests.
The assessment focused on analysing biological and ecological data to estimate how these pests could spread and what impact they could have if introduced into the EU.
After pre-selecting the most relevant pests, 47 pest species were examined, including the 20 currently classified as priority pests in the EU.
The reports and data sets produced (including over 220 estimates of expansion rates and yield losses, as well as 150 environmental impact values) have been sent to the Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC). This data feeds into a model specifically designed to classify pests according to their level of threat. The results of this model will help risk managers review the current list of 20 priority pests, which was first adopted in 2019.
Link to the EFSA document: https://aeur.eu/f/hz4 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)