The Plant Health Laboratory carries out its expert appraisal mission on two levels:

• its thematic and technical units are involved in scientific and technical expert appraisals to answer methodological questions;
• its Expert Assessment of Biological Risks (ERB) unit, in conjunction with the Agency's Risk Assessment Department (DER), produces pest risk analyses and provides scientific and technical support.

Participation in a European project for the monitoring of scientific publications and media articles concerning pests

In addition to coordinating expert risk assessments, the ERB unit is working with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for the Horizon Scanning project. The aim of this ongoing project is the forward-looking analysis of the media and scientific literature with the aim of identifying new and emerging pests. The Horizon Scanning project has also led to the design of a system for classifying new and emerging pests to identify those requiring a risk analysis by EFSA or changes to border control measures. To carry out this project, the unit has capitalised on the expertise acquired with the development of the Biological Organisms data Retrieval and Ranking system (BiOR2) tool for the classification of pests.