seed & plant importations
Diane Whitehead (Tue, 27 Jan 2009 10:26:43 PST)

Iain,

Indeed, scary stuff.

However, to respond to the very bottom of your message - the use of
dogs is not a useless shortcut. It is a quick efficient way of
screening incoming mail or large volumes of luggage at airports. Dogs
are trained to detect plants, fruit, meat, narcotics, explosives, and
probably a few more articles of concern. It takes a lot less time for
a dog to sniff my suitcase rather than having a person open it and
look through it. Having a dog sniff all the incoming mail means that
it all gets searched. Of course, the right dog would need to be
sniffing. If only narcotic and explosive sniffers are on duty, then
plants will slip through undetected.

We have Detector Dogs in Canada, and I've had dogs sniff my car when
I've driven into the U.S. I believe Australia uses them too.

Diane Whitehead
Canada