Plant Health Management Standard 1.2 (released on the 1 July 2022)

Current version - The Plant Health Management Standard is intended to assist businesses and organisations in the development of a consistent plant biosecurity management system. The overarching aim of this standard is to minimise the threat of notifiable pests being spread via the live plant supply chain. The standard sets out the requirements for an integrated plant biosecurity management system for a business or organisation, including periodic reviews for the continual improvement of management processes.

Please find a link to the current version of the Plant Health Management Standard 1.2 (released on the 1 July 2022). This version of the Standard is now available to use and be audited against and will be the sole version used for audits from the 1st October 2022 onward. There are several minor changes which are detailed below:

Updates from the previous Plant Health Management Standard (version 1.1):

The requirement previously referred to as 4.1 has been removed.

Additional information has been added to requirement 1.5 to outline exactly what other statutory requirements it refers to.

The Pest Risk Analysis has now been extended to be called the Site and Operations Pest Risk Analysis (SOPRA) and there is now additional guidance on how to produce a SOPRA, both within the Standard and as an Appendix to the Standard. The requirement to review the SOPRA has been split out into its own requirement under 4.2.

Additional information has been added to section 6 (previously section 4.6) to provide clarity as to what is needed to meet the requirements and how it will be assessed.

The requirement previously referred to as 4.8.1 has been split into 2 requirements – self assessment and continuous improvement.

The requirement previously referred to as 4.9.4 has been removed. Health and Safety is outside the scope of the Plant Health Management Standard.

Terminology changes

The Plant Health Policy is now referred to as the Plant Biosecurity Policy to emphasise the focus on preventing the introduction and spread of notifiable pests.

References to staff/employees have been changed to ‘personnel’ to ensure all people working with or for a company or organisation are included, regardless of employment status.

Visit: https://planthealthy.org.uk/assets/images/Plant-Health-Management-Standard-V1.2.pdf