The document presents four papers, each giving an overview of various animal and plant health information systems in the USA and Canada. 1) The US National Agricultural Pest Information Systems (NAPIS) was developed in 1982 and evolved from systems which had been set up over times past. Essentially NAPIS consists of a programme for detection and survey of pests as well as a data base management programme. This system coordinates information from 50 states and contains 3 million records at present. 2) Mr. D. Gray of Agriculture Canada outlined how the unit is organised and the development in Canada of plant protection and pest risk studies. An important point was made of the need to be able to collect and evaluate the necessary information to allow for adequate pest risk studies. 3) Dr. J. Farrar, US National Animal Health Monitoring Systems (HAHMS). The document outlines the development of the system pointing out the superiority of NAHMS over previous systems all of which suffered from two major drawbacks -their inaccuracy in collecting data and the fact that under reporting frequently occured. Also described earlier Pilot Survey Programmes form 1982 - 1987 which have now given rise to the NAHMS-Core Programme. The last one, 4) presents a framework for classifying surveillance and monitoring systems and described APHIN as a Passive, Volunteer, Service and Ongoing systems. (MIBA)