Info on relaxation of USDA import rules for seed
Russell Stafford, Odyssey Bulbs (Mon, 03 May 2004 15:15:55 PDT)
Except for the limits on the number of seeds per packet and the number of
packets per shipment, the proposed regulations sound very much like the
ones already in place for importation of seeds of woody plants. The rules
require such seed to be imported through one of the designated APHIS
stations. My Royal Horticultural Society shipment always includes some
seeds of woody plants and always enters through New York APHIS, and
although USDA is slower than I would like in inspecting the seeds and
relaying them to me I have otherwise had no problems.
As Joe said, you only need to give general information on the import permit
-- such as some of the genera that you're likely to import and the
countries you're most likely to import them from. A few weeks later you
receive your permit (good for 5 years) and a supply of yellow and green
labels to be sent to suppliers, along with a copy of your permit. If you
run out of labels USDA will send more.
It appears to me that these new rules would in many cases be a significant
improvement over the current ones. Some provision needs to be made for
importing genera such as Hypericum that tend to have very fine seeds, and
the labeling requirements (if taken literally) seem too fussy, but in
general these rules will make it much easier and less costly for entities
such as the Royal Horticultural Society to send seed to the U.S.
In short, far better and less burdensome to be required to obtain a permit
-- good for 5 years -- to import small quantities of seeds than to be
required to obtain a phyto certificate for each importation.
Russell
At 10:36 PM 5/1/2004 -0700, you wrote:
Dear All,
After reading through all of this it sounds like a different permit would
be required for each shipment of seed. So if say one of the members of
this list in another country wanted to send seed to one of us in the
United States we would have to ask for a permit for that seed by name and
include where it was coming from. If the permit were granted it would be
sent to the person along with labels for where to send the seed and then
the seed would be sent there to be inspected and if o.k. it would then be
sent on to the recipient. Is that the way everyone else interprets this?
There would be extra cost for postage to ask for the permit, to send the
permit on to the exporter if granted and then to pay for the seed to go
for inspection and then back to you. It sounds like for a seed exchange
the person receiving the seed would have to know ahead of time what it
would be in order to request the permit for each donor and a bit of a
nightmare to do all the paper work. Is this what Leo means by thinking the
new system might be worse than the old one?
Mary Sue
Russell Stafford
Odyssey Bulbs
8984 Meadow Lane, Berrien Springs, Michigan 49103
269-471-4642
http://www.odysseybulbs.com/