Importing seeds and bulbs

William Aley aley_wd@mac.com
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 20:40:50 PST
On the postal delivery side of the equation, it is not a USDA policy  
change. There has been no change of policy within the US regulations.  
Some of the issues may be long-term memory with the postal service and  
the inspecting officials of Homeland Security.

 From a fiscal legal issue. you could not send a check to USDA and  
have an Officer cash it at a inspection station to add postage. to  
much unaccounted money exchange. Not a good option at all. We are  
trying to keep the exchange of money out of the daily duties of  
officers. temptation is a mean bee to contain.


A few threads past I mentioned that a legal element in the government  
is trying to determine fault when a package by-passes the inspection  
station?
The school of thought is to charge the importer with the misdeeds of  
the exporter. The "official" label reduces the accidental delivery to  
the final destination.

By design - having the final destination label on the inside that can  
be affixed over the green and yellow seems like a best option. We are  
still dealing with getting the parcel back into the system for final  
delivery. But I have been assured that the policy is more in the court  
of the postal service. We are working on viable solutions that work  
for USDA to move commodities and the postal service to recognize that  
the material is just passing via the inspection station and that in  
most cases the box leaving the inspection station is the same or in  
some cases less than when it entered into the Inspection Station.
I'm not too sure who all these people are who would be checking every  
parcel entering through the international mail system and if taxpayers  
would approve the amount of staff necessary to check every box and  
parcel. Or how we are to train everyone at the postal service to look  
for specific double addresses labels. Especially when most of the  
operations are automated by zip-code readers and barcodes. There are a  
lot less live bodies looking at the mail these days and much more  
automation from Xray scanning to detection of addresses.
The green and yellow label directs the package to the Plant Inspection  
station- it is the address affixed to the box. There are not too many  
people watching boxes go by and removing the labelled ones from a  
conveyer belt. the delivery goes to the address on the box.

Bill


More information about the pbs mailing list