Pacific Island quarantine officials along with private sector producers and exporters are now better positioned to take advantage of opportunities presented to them as a result of regional and global trading agreements. These trading agreements, in particular their regulatory aspects, were the focussed of a series of meetings and workshops clustered around an international meeting called the 15^th Technical Consultation among Regional Plant Protection Organisation.

The Technical Consultation focused on harmonisation of quarantine procedures while the meetings and workshops considered quarantine aspects of trade.

SPC Plant Protection Service and the FAO-IPPC Secretariat jointly arranged the meetings and workshops, which were held in Nadi and Sigatoka, beginning of October 2003.

There were workshops on pre-shipment, high temperature treatments for commodities, and a separate meeting of the Pacific Plant Protection Organisation (PPPO). Phytosanitary matters, trade facilitation and capacity building are the main areas PPPO is Pacific island countries. Delegates from the Pacific and representatives from international Plant Protection Organisations from Canada, Uruguay, France, USA, Australia and New Zealand attended the meetings. In one of the workshops a proposal was made to develop a regional database for national pests to be shared amongst Pacific countries.

The meeting ended with a field trip to the Sigatoka Valley where participants visited farms registered to produce approved commodities for export to New Zealand under the New Zealand-Fiji Bilateral Quarantine Agreement including registered pack houses involved in buying, grading, packaging and handling exports to New Zealand under the BQA arrangement.