United States Department of Agriculture
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

Purpose: To provide trading partners an official USDA-APHIS list of Regulated Plant Pests of concern to the US, and to provide focus to APHIS' safeguarding activities including pre-clearance inspection at ports of entry, exotic pest surveys, and eradication activities.

Legal Basis: The World Trade Organization's Sanitary and Phytosanitary agreement, ratified April, 1996, requires that countries strive towards transparency in their actions with trade partners. The rationale is that through greater transparency, better information is made available, and unjustified phytosanitary trade barriers will be revealed, challenged, and eliminated.

In addition, the US is signatory to the The International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) agreement which is administered under Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. IPPC is recognized as the standard setting organization for plant health issues. Several sections of the IPPC revised text support the need for a country to make a pest list available:

Background: The Regulated Pest List (RPL) provides focus to APHIS' safeguarding activities, including inspection of commodities for pests in its pre-clearance programs and at US ports-of-entry, surveys for exotic pests, methods for pest risk mitigation, and pest eradication programs. The list largely was derived from pests identified in Title 7, Code of Federal Regulations, Parts 300-399. The list was updated to reflect recent taxonomic nomenclature and pest status. APHIS continually detects threatening new pests through its inspection and survey activities. In addition, due to changes in pest status or new information, certain pests detected through inspection or survey may no longer be regulated. The pests on the list were a known threat at the time the list was posted at this Internet site. Therefore, the RPL does not include all pests for which APHIS would necessarily take action.

The RPL is subject to revision. Species names may be considered for addition or removal from the database by sending scientific evidence supporting the proposed change to the address specified in the Internet site. Suggestions for how this web site may be improved to meet your needs are welcome.

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Download a PDF file of this list .... 18 KB

APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) may take quarantine action on organisms within the following higher taxa whether or not they are included on the pest list.