Diane - it was an APHIS inspector who told me that about Czech phytos (a voice on the phone) - I have no independent information. It was a response to my question about why plants coming in with a valid phyto needed to be reinspected. At the risk of exhausting my welcome, I want to make some (ultimately) positive remarks about this question of regulating and inspecting plant imports. I do have to say, first, that it appears the system doesn't function too well. Incoming legal plant material appears to be going largely uninspected, despite the apparent fact that foreign export regulation (issuing of phytos) is at best an uneven process. Incoming illegal imports probably largely go undetected, because the first line of defense - identifying a package that needs inspection - presumably depends on the US postal and Customs services doing their jobs with greater zeal than, say, Debbie's informant says they do. And if incoming illegal imports all became legal via the following of existing regulations (remember, import permits are free, though phytos usually are not), the system would be even more overwhelmed than it is. One tactic, which seems to be the currently preferred one, is to threaten people with large fines if they get caught. My previous life as an economist leads me to observe that the expected cost of smuggling is measured by multiplying the probability of getting caught by the fine levied if one is caught. Playing with some arbitrary numbers here, if the probability of getting caught is as high as 1% (I'm guessing it's much lower) and the expected fine is $2000, the expected penalty for smuggling is (.01)(2000) = $20, which renders the smuggling of a single plant borderline not-worthwhile - but if the probability of getting caught is 0.1%, the expected cost is only $2 (versus whatever the perceived value of the smuggled material is). A very high fine (say, $250,000) should definitely discourage small-time smuggling, but only if people know with certainty that it will be levied if they're caught - and from what I hear from the grapevine, penalties generally levied on individuals are much lower than that. The only people who are discouraged from smuggling by POSSIBLE high fines are the same types who won't fly, viz, people who are so terrified by the low-probability high-cost outcome that they don't look beyond that to see that the activity is (alas in the case of plants) relatively safe. The bottom line is that a positive, energetic, informative public education campaign is about your only rational line of defense when you're woefuly underfunded and understaffed. It's far more likely to get the attention of a rational individual than is threatening them with high fines - it appeals to their better natures, it's cheap, and it makes clear for them why what they're doing is wrong. And them's my thoughts this fine morning, and there I will end it. Ellen Ellen Hornig Seneca Hill Perennials 3712 County Route 57 Oswego NY 13126 USA http://www.senecahillperennials.com/ ----- Original Message ----- > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/