The International Plant Protection Convention has developed a new standard, which stipulates how wood packaging material used in international trade should be treated prior to export.
The new International Standards for Phytosanitary Measures No. 15 or (ISPM 15), a set of standards, has been implemented in around 78 countries, as of October 2013.
According to a study conducted by Forest Service Northern Research Station research entomologist Robert Haack and a team scientists, the international standard for wood packaging material is slowing the inadvertent export of invasive bark and wood-boring insects.
The standard has been implemented in the US in three phases between 2005 and 2006 and the researchers claimed that they found 52% drop in infestation there.
Haack said, "The reduction in infestation rate would likely have been even higher if we had more years of data that predated U.S. implementation of these international standards."
According to him, infestation rates were higher in the early 1990s and based on infestation data of wood packaging material entering New Zealand during that period, the standard has achieved closer to a 97% reduction in the number of insect stowaways.
Wood is said to be an inexpensive, abundant and versatile packaging material, but one main drawback of it is that destructive forest pests stowaway in the pallets, crates and dunnage that are used in international shipping.
International trade has resulted in the introduction of many non-native wood-feeding pests and plant pathogens in the US and across the globe, over many years.
The emerald ash borer and the Asian longhorned beetle, said to be some of these non-native insects, have become highly invasive causing serious environmental as well as economic impacts.