Chinese Government

I’m Susan All, a host of commodity groups in our state from Hay, Tree Fruit to hard wood are celebrating that the Chinese government has “regionalized” the Zika disinfection requirement to vessels that originate or load in Florida only and that will keep our Northwest ports operating efficiently. China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine stated that it has decided to regionalize its Zika requirements for shipments of cargo from the United States based on a risk-assessment performed by AQSIQ, using data supplied by U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). AQSIQ experts determined that due to the low risk of Zika transmission through shipments of cargo, vessels originating from the United States, other than the state of Florida, do not require disinsection certification. Interestingly I spoke with John Stuhlmiller CEO of Washington Farm Bureau about the importance of keeping export flowing from our ports

Stuhlmiller: Actually we just had a great example of that (or rather a poor example if you will, negative in the finance side) when our ports slowed down this last year we saw millions of dollars,. probably billions of dollars of lost revenue for agriculture because the West and actually all across the country is shipped through West Coast Ports and when those were not able to deliver products in an efficient fashion lots of money lost by agriculture and others as well

Our commodity fingers crossed that the sampling and testing goes well because China has warned that , if during the course of routine inspection, if local CIQ officials discover any adult mosquitoes, eggs, larva or infected cases, the vessel and its contents will be subject to the full Zika requirements.