[BULBS-L] Importing Bulbs and Seeds
Ellen Hornig (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