PEI Potato Wart Pt 2
I’m Bob Larson. “Potato Wart” is a devastating disease that’s now been detected twice in the past year on Canada’s Prince Edward Island. And trade has been halted until officials can get a handle on it.
National Potato Council CEO Kam Quarles says the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the USDA aggressively jumped on this second detection …
QUARLES … “It’s not a great situation and we obviously sympathize with the PEI growers, what their going through, but you know, unfortunately, the disease is creative and it wants to get out and the facts, as the USDA and the Canadians see them, it’s not a great situation right now.”
Quarles says we need to learn more …
QUARLES … “I think the immediate step that CFIA is going to take is to try and figure out exactly how widely the disease has spread. These detections occurring so close to each other is not a good sign that things are under control and I think everybody kind of recognizes that.”
The hope, Quarles says is to positively identify where the potato wart is …
QUARLES … “Obviously, there’s a lot of trade that goes back and forth between the U.S. and Canada, and the U.S. and PEI specifically. It’s not in anybody’s interest to have that trade disrupted, but the threat of the disease, what that would mean to all of our global markets, as well as all the other provinces in Canada, it’s just too big of a threat to not take dramatic action.”
Quarles says they’re working together with Canadian officials and this is NOT a “trade war.”
