CLARKE... we have strengthened our Plant Quarantine Division and the food service sector, in order to facilitate greater compliance with internationally accepted HACCP standards

Representatives from the Caribbean, including Jamaica, met Tuesday to participate in a five-day regional workshop to review draft International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures (ISPM), aimed at ensuring that consumers were being supplied with food that is safe.

Dunstan Campbell, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative in Jamaica, Bahamas, and Belize, explained that the next five days would allow participants the opportunity to arrive at a common subregional position on the draft standards, which are currently in the consultative phase of the standard setting process.

Participants, meanwhile, include Trinidad, Barbados, Dominica, St Kitts, Guyana and Surinam. They are to discuss, among other things, the revision of ISPM number two, which speaks to pest risk and analysis as well as the regulation of pest free areas and areas with low pest prevalence.

"All these are important and will impact directly on international trade so it is imperative that you give it your full attention," he said, adding that participation in the workshops would help to ensure that the needs of the Caribbean subregion were taken into account.

Roger Clarke, Minister of Agriculture and Land, in the interim, told the gathering that the government had spent close to $100 million to put measures in place to safeguard the safety of the domestic food production for local and export markets.

Among them is the establishment of a sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) inquiry point at the Plant Quarantine and Produce Division, which allows access to all World Trade Organisation SPS measures that is disseminated amongst farmers and agro-processors islandwide.

"In the last two years, we have strengthened our Plant Quarantine Division and the food service sector, in order to facilitate greater compliance with internationally accepted HACCP standards relating to food storage and packing," the minister said. "This is done through an injection of more than $90 million from one of the ministry's flagship projects, the ASSP (Agriculture Support Services Project)."

Additionally, Clarke said that the National Plant Health Surveillance and Pest Response System was launched last year, at a cost of $3.8 million. This system is designed to assist in identifying potential threats to plant health, as well as to facilitate information sharing on pest identification, pest risk analyses, crop loss assessments and the training of farmers and processors.

The workshop is the third of it kind in as many years. The first was hosted in St Lucia in 2004 and the second, in Port of Spain, Trinidad last year. It culminates on Saturday.

-davidsont@jamaicaobserver.com

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