Plants are essential for supporting human life, providing food, oxygen and medicine as well as benefits to health from interacting with nature. Plants also play a crucial role in ecosystems and in mitigating the effects of climate change. The importance of plants to humans and to the
environment is gaining a higher level of attention in today's political and social landscape. The Great Britain Plant Health and Biosecurity Strategy will be updated this year to reflect upcoming challenges for maintaining high biosecurity standards while the Tree Health Resilience Strategy
protects our trees going forward, allowing for adaption to environmental change and building resilience to future threats. Additionally, 2020 is the FAO's International Year of Plant Health providing a unique opportunity to raise the profile of plant heath further on a global scale. Critical
to biosecurity is the global trade in plants and plant commodities which may offer us the option to grow plants that are more suited to a future, warmer climate and thus more resilient to climate change, but which brings with it an increased risk of invasive pests and diseases. It is important
that we protect our native species and minimise the risks of introducing new pests and diseases. The UK's plant health regime aims to manage that risk to protect the value of plants and trees, both as crops and forestry products, as well as ecosystem services and societal benefits. The UK
is a net importer of plants and plant commodities and it is the role of the Plant Health and Seeds Inspectorate (PHSI) and the Forestry Commission (FC) to carry out checks on imported material. Given that there are over 1,000 pests on the UK Plant Health Risk Register the challenge cannot
be understated. It is unrealistic to expect that we can provide effective protection from all pests and diseases so potentially serious pests which are identified by the UK Plant Health Risk Group are subject to a detailed pest risk analysis (PRA) following internationally agreed methodologies.
Import inspections are risk-based and use the outcomes of the PRA as the basis for focusing resource to the highest threats. The experimental statistics released by Defra in March 2020 'Plant Health – international trade and controlled consignments, 2014–2018' were developed
to address some of the evidence gaps around plant health related trade and the value of plant health, and to provide users with information on the work of import inspectors.
Sun exposure of indoor workers in the UK – survey on the time spent outdoors