The North American Plant Protection Organization held its 40th Annual meeting in the city of Montreal, Quebec, Canada from Oct 31 to November 3, 2016.  Close to 140 participants from 10 countries attended the three-day meeting, including government and industry representatives from Canada, the United States and Mexico, as well as academics and invited phytosanitary experts from several countries in Central and South America, and Europe.Dr. Paul Mayers, Vice-President of Policy and Programs for the Canadian Food inspection Agency provided the opening remarks on Tuesday morning.

The meeting presentations featured short project updates on the 2016 NAPPO annual work program, a side-session on the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) standard setting activities, three knowledge topics on important phytosanitary issues (SPS Disputes, host status and emerging plants issues) and one-day Symposium entitled “Building on industry experience and best practices for efficient Alternative (or third-party ) Service Delivery”.  Updates on the IPPC International Year of Plant Health and the ePhyto hub were also presented.

Government and Industry representatives had a chance to engage in discussions on emerging phytosanitary issues for North America. During the meeting, the NAPPO Executive Committee (Marie-Claude Forest, Osama El-Lissy and Javier Trujillo-Arriaga) signed the new NAPPO 5-year strategic plan as well as NAPPOs updated constitution and by-laws.

The NAPPO Executive Director (Stephanie Bloem) and the leader of Agricultural Health and Food Safety for the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation in Agriculture-IICA (Robert Ahern), signed a 5-year Letter of understanding between IICA and NAPPO.