What is Quarantine?
- Increasing international travel and trade globalization, the persistence of trans-boundary plant/animal/human diseases in the world poses a serious risk to world humans/animal/ agriculture/food security. Quarantine is a 40 days period of isolation for people or animal that has or may have disease.
- WTO seeks to facilitate global trade but accepts that global rules and standards are required to manage possible adverse impacts from increased trade, e.g. the cross-border movement of pests, diseases, contaminants.
- The IPPC and international bodies involved in the implementation of sanitary and phytosanitary measures
- SPS( sanitary and phytosanitary )Agreement are made to manage trade between countries And to protect animal health, plant health and food safety.
What is Plant Quarantine?
- A legal restriction on movement of agricultural commodities for the purpose of exclusion, prevention or delay in the establishment of plants, pests and diseases in the area where they are not present.
- Significance of Plant Quarantine has increased in view of Globalisation and liberalisation in International trade of plants and plant material in the wake of Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement under WTO.
- Plant quarantine is to safeguard against harmful pests/pathogens exotic to a country or a region.
- In India, Plant Quarantine regulatory measures are operative through the “Destructive insects & pests Act, 1914” . The intent of this act is to prevent the introduction of any insect, fungus or other pest, which is or may be destructive to crop.