----- Original Message ----- From: "William Aley" <aley_wd@me.com> To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 6:27 PM Subject: Re: [pbs] Importing Small Lots of Seed - Thanks > Thanks Robin, > In all honesty we do realize that the import system is not reflective of > the modern processes. That being said we can not petition congress for > change. We can amend the CFRs, and that is a very long process. The US > system is great for transparency but can get bogged down with the need to > appease as much of the population as possible. Public disclosure, forums > & feedback help to keep us on track but this takes time and there is the > ever looming problem that government needs to be smaller. Thus > international agreements and making our regulations comparable to other > countries becomes a slower process. > > For the plants for planting universe there are changes in the works. Some > groups want to totally ban plant imports for reasons of fear to > environmental pollution of the N. American biomes. > http://www.invasive.org/gist/learnmore.html Where others think the > government is too restrictive and all imports should be at the discretion > of the individual. We try to find a balance. > As I mentioned before the Hatch Act prohibits government employees from > advocating change to elected official. But groups like this when > organized can contact the Secretary of Agriculture directly with > requests, recommendations and (most often) complaints. We do listen and > try to find a balance and we try to help as much as we can within the > limits of the CFR. > > For more information go to the PPQ website to be included in the > stakeholder registry > https://web01.aphis.usda.gov/PPQStakeWeb2.nsf > there are a couple of presentations that may be useful too. > UNITED STATES of AMERICA (716Kb) - Regulations Affecting Seed ... > > New information is added to the website from the NAPPRA rule > (http://aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/… > ) to Federal Orders that are the precursor to changing the CFR: > http://aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/… > > I do hope this helps. > Bill > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ >