ISPM 15
standard for treating wood products used to ship products between countries

International Standards For Phytosanitary Measures No. 15 (ISPM 15) is an International Phytosanitary Measure developed by the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC) that directly addresses the need to treat wood materials of a thickness greater than 6mm, used to ship products between countries. Its main purpose is to prevent the international transport and spread of disease and insects that could negatively affect plants or ecosystems. ISPM 15 affects all wood packaging material (pallets, crates, dunnage, etc.) and requires that they be debarked and then heat treated or fumigated with methyl bromide, and stamped or branded with a mark of compliance. This mark of compliance is colloquially known as the "wheat stamp". Products exempt from the ISPM 15 are made from an alternative material, like paper, plastic or wood panel products (i.e. OSB, hardboard, and plywood).
ISPM 15 revision
The Revision of ISPM No. 15 (2009) under Annex 1, requires that wood used to manufacture ISPM 15 compliant Wood Packaging must be made from debarked wood not to be confused with bark free wood. ISPM 15 was updated to adopt the bark restriction regulations proposed by the European Union in 2009.
“ISPM 15” enters the record as standard for treating wood products used to ship products between countries. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what ISPM, standard and treating can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“ISPM 15” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, ISPM, standard and treating provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4175792. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2009.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “ISPM 15” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.