APHIS Potato Wart Report Pt 2
From the Ag Information Network, I’m Bob Larson. Current mitigation efforts to keep a potato wart infestation on Canada’s Prince Edward Island from entering the U.S. are insufficient … according to a new report from the USDA’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service.
At the very least, National Potato Council President, Kam Quarles says this report should get everyone’s attention …
QUARLES … “This report is a call to USDA as we as the Canadian authority, CFIA, to go back and fix that work plan that is clearly not doing the job.”
And, Quarles says we can’t just sit back and hope for the best, we need to act and do it now …
QUARLES … “They have to institute new measures to deal with this risk. And if they can’t do it rapidly, I think all options need to be on the table including, unfortunately, an export ban. There’s no other alternative given what APHIS has found and released in this report.”
The APHIS report, Quarles says justifies every concern we’ve had all along …
QUARLES … “Given this investigation, what’s come out, it’s very obvious that those troubling warning signs, they weren’t just smoke, there was fire there, and something, a solution, has to be arrived at.”
Quarles says without adequate mitigation measures, potato wart is almost certainly be introduced into the U.S.
