Increased Precision in Europe's New Xylella Fastidiosa Legislation

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The European Commission has announced new and ​“more tar­geted” mea­sures to con­tain the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa in the European Union.

The new reg­u­la­tions replace the pre­vi­ous ones, which came into force in 2015. The Commission made its deci­sions to change the pre­vi­ous reg­u­la­tions based on the lat­est research from the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

Among the biggest changes to the reg­u­la­tions is shrink­ing the infec­tion zone from a 100-meter (330-foot) radius of any infected plant to a 50-meter (165-foot) radius. However, the def­i­n­i­tion of which plants must be uprooted in the infec­tion zone has not changed sub­stan­tially.

The deci­sion to cut the infec­tion zone in half will likely be greeted with relief from farm­ers, many of whom argued that the orig­i­nal 100-meter zone was exces­sive and led to the destruc­tion of too many healthy trees.

Along with shrink­ing the size of the infec­tion zone, the asso­ci­ated buffer zone, which is meant to pre­vent the spread of Xylella fas­tidiosa to unaf­fected areas, has also been cut in half.

Under new reg­u­la­tions, the buffer zone that sur­rounds each infec­tion zone will extend another 2.5 to five kilo­me­ters (1.6 to 3.1 miles). The width of the buffer zone will be deter­mined based on whether the dis­ease is actively spread­ing and what erad­i­ca­tion mea­sures have been taken.

The orig­i­nal reg­u­la­tions spec­i­fied that all buffer zones must have a width of at least five to 10 kilo­me­ters (3.1 to 6.2 miles).

In the event that a sin­gle plant has been infected and erad­i­cated before the dis­ease has spread, the buffer zone will remain at one kilo­me­ter (0.6 miles), as was pre­vi­ously leg­is­lated.

Along with changes in the def­i­n­i­tion to these demar­cated areas, the new reg­u­la­tions also call on E.U. mem­ber states to ​“inten­sify” their annual sur­veys in order to iden­tify out­breaks more quickly.

The European Commission also con­cluded that in cer­tain areas, includ­ing south­ern Puglia, the French island of Corsica and Spain’s Balearic Islands, erad­i­ca­tion of Xylella fas­tidiosa is no longer fea­si­ble and instead local author­i­ties should con­cen­trate their efforts on con­tain­ing the dis­ease.

If left unchecked, the E.U. fears Xylella fas­tidiosa would lead to an annual pro­duc­tion loss of €5.5 bil­lion ($6.5 mil­lion) and elim­i­nate 300,000 jobs.

• Official Journal of the European Union
• Official Journal of the European Union