North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Neil T Lewis <lewisn@georgetown.edu>]

Donna,

Unfortunately such idiocy is also prevalent in Australia. My sister in law, 
who lives in an apple orchard area in South Australia, tells me that the 
government is planning to allow import of apples from New Zealand into 
Australia. New Zealand has fireblight, Australia does not. The orchardists 
around her are appalled.

> Message: 4
> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2007 09:12:45 -0500
> From: "Donna &/or Kieran" <holycow@cookeville.com>
> Subject: Re: [NAFEX] APHIS blamed for letting in CCD
> To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
> Message-ID: <009f01c817da$5187c1e0$c70efc04@YOUR20FE224C19>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>       reply-type=original
> 
> For those of you who think APHIS is a bunch of idiots, here's an 
> interview 
> with some bee expert who told APHIS that he wanted to quarantine 
> the bees 
> they'd decided to let in from Australia.  We hadn't had new bees 
> brought 
> into the US for 83 years, so he said let's quarantine them for 
> awhile, then 
> inspect them.  APHIS said if he insisted on doing that, he would be 
> interfering with commerce and profits, and he'd be sued.  Sooo, I 
> wonder 
> what the net gains and losses add up to for the American beekeeping 
> industry 
> resulting from the importation of Australian bees?  I believe in 
> China that 
> the APHIS top guys would be publicly beheaded.
>    Now that I think about it, it seems like APHIS has been very 
> quiet 
> during all the cries of consternation regarding CCD.  Are they 
> feeling a bit 
> guilty about their decision to let bees into this country with less 
> background checking or inspection than the average tourist endures? 
>  I hope 
> you all can access this link: 
> http://www.earthfiles.com/news.php?ID=1323&category=Environment 
> 
>