CONVENTION

LEY N° 13.634

Inter-American Vegetal Health

Sanctioned: September 30-1949

Promulgated: October 17-1949.

WHY:


ARTICLE 1 - Approve the text of the Inter-American Convention on Vegetal Health, concluded in the city of Buenos Aires on September 24, 1948 between the governments of the Argentine Republic, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay.

ARTICLE 2° - Contact the Executive.

Given in the meeting room of the Argentine Congress, in Buenos Aires, on the thirty days of the month of September of the year, a thousand nine hundred and forty-nine.

J. H. QUIJANO	H. J. CAMPORA
Alberto H. Reales	J. Zavalla Carbó

ARTICLE 1 The Governments of the contracting countries undertake to take the necessary legislative and administrative measures to ensure common and effective action against the introduction and extension of the pests of agriculture.

These measures should include: 1) To verify the occurrence and extent of the pests of agriculture and to denounce their existence to the contracting countries: (2) To combat the pests of agriculture, and 3) To regulate the transport, packaging and packaging of plants and their parts.

ARTICLE 2° - It is understood by pest of agriculture, for the purposes of this Convention, any living organism, animal or vegetable, or of an infectious nature such as viruses, harmful to plants or their parts.

ARTICLE 3°- In order to ensure compliance with the measures provided for in Article 1, official plant health services will be organized in each contracting country.

These services will include at least: 1) A research facility for the study of the pests of agriculture, and 2) A service to certify the health status of agricultural products for export. The contracting countries undertake to establish such services as soon as they do not possess them.

ARTICLE 4°- The contracting countries shall not admit the importation of plants or their parties if they are not accompanied by the phytosanitary certificate referred to in Article 6. issued by the competent official authorities. The importing country may terminate such a requirement when it deems it appropriate. The import will be carried out only by the ports and customs authorized to do so, which the importing country will make known to the exporting country.

ARTICLE 5°- Each country shall retain the right to inspect, quarantine the plants or their parts, or to prohibit their temporary import, even if the shipments are accompanied by the phytosanitary certificate. The country that prohibits the import must disclose the basis of that measure to the exporting country. When shipments arrive in poor sanitary conditions they will be subjected to prophylactic treatments that require the regulations in the importing country. In the event of destruction, or re-embarkation, a record will be released from which the exporting country will be informed.

ARTICLE 6°- The phytosanitary certificates shall be drawn up in accordance with the model annexed to this Convention. These certificates should specify that plants or their parts protected by them are free from the pests of agriculture against which the importing country wishes to protect itself.

ARTICLE 7°- Contracting countries may not exclude, for reasons of sanitary defense, plants or their parties that proceed from a particular region or territory, where they do not respond to the following conditions: (1) Effective existence in the exporting country of dangerous pests; and (2) Real need for the importing country to protect its crops made up of plants notoriously guests of such pests. They are considered dangerous pests that do not exist in the importing country, they are very economically damaging in the exporting country.

This prohibition shall last until it has been proved to the satisfaction of the parties, that the region or territory is free from the contamination of the pest.

ARTICLE 8- The contracting countries undertake not to prohibit the importation of plants or their parts from specific pest-free regions or territories, on the grounds that they exist in other regions or territories of the exporting country, when it is verified to the satisfaction of the parties that are not exposed to contamination.

ARTICLE 9 - The plants or their parts that reach a country in international transit shall be inspected "official" and for the purposes that they cannot contaminate the area that they are going through during their journey. Only in the case of being attacked from any plague will be subjected to the treatments prescribed in Article 5.

ARTICLE 10 - Continuous contracting countries with dispersion areas for the pests of agriculture may agree to facilitate the exchange of plants or their parts

ARTICLE 11- The exchange of enemies of plants or guests attacked for study purposes is limited to cosmopolitan species and recognized as non-hazardous. In all cases the shipments will be authorized by the government of the importing country and under conditions that offer absolute security guarantees.

ARTICLE 12 - The contracting countries will coordinate defense against the pests of agriculture, providing mutual assistance and providing the information, technical staff and means of struggle available. In addition, they will publish a bulletin registering chronologically the main activities that develop in the field of plant health, to serve as an information exchange body.

ARTICLE 13- The implementation of this Convention shall be carried out directly among the official technical services of the signatory countries.

ARTICLE 14- In the event of disagreement in the interpretation of the clauses set forth in the Convention, or if it were necessary to discuss measures taken by one country affecting another, the differences shall be submitted to a Joint Commission consisting of two representatives of each contracting party, which shall propose the measures to be applied to resolve the differences.

ARTICLE 15 - Every five years an Inter-American Conference will be held in which all the problems of international interest concerning plant health will be studied. Each Conference shall elect the country in which the following will be carried out, with the government of the country chosen to do so to proceed to the convocation of the same six months prior to the date set for its realization, also in charge of the preparation and timely distribution of the subject. The date of the meeting may be forwarded to the simple request of one of the signatory countries that would have an interest in it, requesting it to the government where it should be carried out, in which case this government will let the other adherents of this Convention know.

ARTICLE 16 -The present Convention is open for accession by other countries of America that have not subscribed to it, and accept everything contained therein.

Accession shall be notified by diplomatic means to the Government of the Argentine Republic, and through it, to the other signatory countries.

ARTICLE 17 - The present Convention shall be ratified in accordance with the laws of each of the contracting countries, and the respective instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Worship of the Argentine Republic in the shortest possible time, making this deposit the times of exchange.

Argentina: Juan B. Marchionatto, Hermes Muñoz Pinochet, José Vallega, Everard E. Blanchard.

Brazil: José Vieira de Oliveira, Jalmires Guimaraes Gomes.

Paraguay: Castor Samaniego Vergara.

Uruguay: Julián Murguía, Agustín Trujillo Peluffo, Lucía Koch de Bertelli, Francisco Mesa Carrión.