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Reply to: Can you give some idea what this cost:

 

I can give a summary of the costs to me, I can not tell you what this cost the Dept of Ag.

 

I contacted a person (a collector of gooseberries) in Belgium and asked him to procure the named plants for me as small rooted plants. I have had very poor results in rooting gooseberries that have been shipped as cuttings. It seems to me that plants from cultivars that have been out of the breeding facility for very long are harder to root. I surmise that this may be because the have become infected with some virus. The small number of plants to clear quarantine may add come credence to this.I did not pay for the plants that were sent to me, I sent a like number of plants to the European grower. I paid $40.00 for a phytosanitary inspection and certificate in order to satisfy the requirements for importation to Belgium. I might add that it is difficult to obtaine these if you do not have a Nursery license. I have aquired a nursery license just to make it easier to obtain and to ship plants. The cost of the license in PA is $40.00 per year.I do not really function as a nursery. I have not renewed the license this year because I am not planning to import or ship plants any longer.

 

Prior to having plants shipped I had to acquire an import permit from APHIS, USDA. they provided labels for me to send to the shipper in Belgium and he affixed them to the outside of the package, my name, address and phone number were to be on the inside of the package only. The plants went directly to the quarantine facility and they notified me when they arrived.

 

The cost of testing and maintenance of the plants during they entire time is borne by USDA (our tax dollars at work) and they take cuttings to send to the germplasm repository in Corvallis, OR. It has been a mutually satisfying project, I have been involved with for many years. I have been able to receive plants or cuttings from Corvallis and I have gone to the quarantine facility to help graft cuttings that were brought in by the USDA

 

Again I must say that we all need to abide by these restrictions. I suspect that the Plum Pox Virus was sent here by some illegal means and now we are having to deal with it. Here in PA there have been many stone fruit trees cut and burned to try to stop the spread of this disease.

 

Ed Mashburn