Bill wrote: >> groups like this when organized can contact the Secretary of Agriculture directly with requests, recommendations and (most often) complaints. Lee wrote: >>Many people, spearheaded by Joyce Fingerut of NARGS, as Jim W. pointed out spent a lot of effort writing, emailing, and calling the USDA We've discussed this issue a few times before, but I just wanted to underline something. Here we have an official of the US government saying that they're open to suggestions from us, and we've got Lee recapping a case in which those suggestions worked. I've talked with Joyce, and she has several other examples where she was able to make a difference. It's really easy to feel helpless and cynical when dealing with a big government bureaucracy, but sometimes it does work. I'd like to ask the members of this list -- especially the Americans and the folks overseas who ship to the US -- to suspend disbelief when issues like this come up in the future. When the new regulations on plant imports are announced, I'm sure there will be an opportunity for us to help fine-tune the rules to accommodate our needs. And in the meantime, I think it would be *great* to see if we can get something similar to the small lots of seed program applied to small quantities of dry bulbs. I'm interested in pursuing that. Is anyone else interested? Mike PS: Thanks, Lee, for the excellent history.