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>>