The probit 9 standard for quarantine treatment efficacy (99.9968% mortality) was originally recommended for tropical fruits heavily infested with fruit flies and it centers on high mortality to achieve quarantine security. This standard may be too stringent for quarantine pests in commodities that are rarely infested or are poor hosts. The alternative treatment efficacy approach measures risk as the probability of a mating pair, gravid female, or parthenogenic individual surviving in a shipment. This will be a function of many factors including infestation rate and shipment volume. Applying the risk-based alternative treatment efficacy approach to pests on rarely infested or poor hosts will lower the number of required test insects needed for developing quarantine treatments; hence data for a quarantine treatment could be generated by testing 10,000 or fewer insects with no survivors, compared with 90,000–100,000 insects to demonstrate the traditional probit 9 efficacy. Several commodity/quarantine pest systems where this approach could be applied are discussed. This approach would save time and resources, and help farmers export their crop on a more-timely basis.