International Portal on Food Safety, Animal and Plant Health (IPFSAPH)
From Biosecwiki
The International Portal on Food Safety, Animal and Plant Health (IPFSAPH) provides a single access point for authorized official international and national information across the sectors of food safety, animal and plant health. It has been developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in association with the organizations responsible for international standard setting in sanitary and phytosanitary matters, namely Codex Alimentarius, International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC), World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and World Trade Organisation (WTO).
Why a new portal?
Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) issues have traditionally been addressed on a sector-by-sector basis. This has typically meant looking at food safety or animal health or plant health issues separately. With increasing economic inter-dependence, international trade and travel, and with the use of novel production and processing technologies, a new, multi-disciplinary approach is needed. The portal responds to this by providing a single access point for the wide range of official, dispersed information related to sanitary and phytosanitary measures.
Advantages of this portal include:
- Authoritative access to official information on a given subject. General search tools on the internet cannot provide this guarantee.
- Single access point for information which increasingly crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. This will help both the competent authorities to protect human, animal and plant health, and increase the confidence of trading partners that traded goods are safe.
- Multi-lingual navigation and search capabilities will eventually be available in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Arabic. The portal content will remain in its original language.
- Free access to all users.
Potential results of IPFSAPH use include:
- Increased transparency in SPS measures by providing information essential for the protection of human, animal and plant health.
- Increased confidence of trading partners, thus supporting enhanced international trade.
- Improved national laws and regulations as those responsible for drafting such can use those in the portal as a model.
