Background
From May to September 2021 a total of 80 unregulated plant pests were found in EFSAs media and literature horizon scanning (EFSA 2021). EFSA has developed a ranking methodology called PeMoScoring to rank such pests to provide guidance with regard to which pests that should be prioritized for further risk assessments. Most of the pests were excluded (e.g. due to limited information) and only 14 were scored and of these 11 were scored as “positive”, i.e. suggested for further assessment. Table 1 below provides a list of the “positive” pests including their synonymous names1.
SLU Risk Assessment of Plant Pests was requested by the Swedish Board of Agriculture to provide feedback in terms of whether any of these pests are present in Sweden and whether there are some special reasons to exclude or prioritize any of the pests for further pest categorizations.