[BULBS-L] Importing Bulbs and Seeds

Ellen Hornig hornig@earthlink.net
Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:48:32 PST
I guess I'm confused by your response, Bill.  I have absolutely no 
disagreement with your point that people should not take matters into their 
own hands and import plant materials illegally.  What bothers me is that the 
legal imports apparently are not effectively being inspected (you don't 
refute my 5% figure), never mind the illegal ones.  As I was once cheerfully 
told by an APHIS inspector, "A Czech phyto isn't worth the paper it's 
written on", and I assume this applies to phytos from many other countries 
as well.  In a situation like this, sampling 5% of legal shipments does very 
little to exclude pests, because they probably stand as a good a chance of 
coming in on legal as illegal shipments. You really have to inspect 
everything, or at least everything coming from countries whose phytos are 
considered undependable.

Or putting it a little differently, there is no argument a priori for 
concentrating efforts on discovering illegal shipments (which I assume are 
typically small) while passing legal shipments (many of which are very 
large) without inspection, is there?  And if PPQ is really concerned with 
excluding new pests and pathogens, a goal I applaud without reservation, 
shouldn't it put its money where it gets the most bang for the buck - which 
I assume is where the largest volume of imports can be found?

Ellen

Ellen Hornig
Seneca Hill Perennials
3712 County Route 57
Oswego NY 13126 USA
http://www.senecahillperennials.com/
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "WDA" <aley_wd@mac.com>
To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2009 9:17 PM
Subject: Re: [pbs] [BULBS-L] Importing Bulbs and Seeds


> DHS inspects cut flowers, fruits and vegetables, generally admissible 
> cargo. It's true that 75% of PPQ went to DHS and as I mentioned before 
> they are more proactive when they catch singular violators. They have also 
> begun holding the importer responsible for the condition of imports. I 
> work for PPQ.
> Propagative plant material is inspected at a plant inspection station by 
> PPQ inspectors. <etc>> 


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