I went to Niagara Falls, ON last weekend and was driving back across the border. If done this before, but this time the customs agent asked if I was bringing any fresh flowers, fruits, or vegetables across the border. I was not and answered the question as such.
But let’s say that I loved Canadian tomatoes, for example, and had my trunk and wheel wells filled with them. Is that a problem? Why do they ask? Would I be going to Guantanamo Bay? Is there a difference between Ontario fresh flora and New York fresh flora so much that the government needs to be concerned?
Ontario is a significant agricultural region for Canada, and controlling what goes across the border is one of the best and cheapest ways to control agricultural pests. The US cares about this, too, and isn’t keen on the potential for pests, but the US/Canada border isn’t quite the vital growing region for the US that it is for Canada.
I understand that Canada’s latitude makes Ontario its breadbasket, so to speak. And I understand pest control in theory. But I was coming FROM Ontario into New York. Let’s say I had a U-Haul, filled top to bottom, with various Ontario fruits and vegetables.
What pest danger would that place upon New York any more so than airborne pests who occupy farms that span the border? How does my already harvested fruit or vegetables, which will certainly go to consumer or home areas for consumption, endanger crops out in the field? That’s the part I’m confused about.
If you want to learn which items are prohibited and which are not, you can visit the US Border Patrol website, which in turn will refer you to the USDA website. For example, you asked about tomatoes:
If a person declares animals or plants or products made therefrom, the border officer will ask more detailed questions to determine if the particular item is admissible or not, and if admissible if it must be quarantined or not.
The issue isn’t whether an apple from the same tree falling on one side of the border or another. The issue is bringing an affected item into the USA, which opens up the possibility of it then being transported to a place in the USA where it could spread harm.
Thanks for the info above. I’m just confused on how that apple or that potato from New Brunswick could spread harm in the U.S. Nobody takes harvested fruit and throws it at crops. They eat it or sell it to restaurants where the patrons eat it.
I can see how unfettered and open borders where professionals bringing potato seed (or whatever they grow out of) from New Brunswick to be implanted in the U.S. could cause a spread of a particular pest or organic disease, but it seems like questioning leisure travelers about ALL fruits and vegetables is administrative overkill. Maybe this should be in GD or MPSIMS but I think there is an answer here somewhere.
Well, it looks like from reference to the US code that they couldn’t see any particular harm from tomatos either, since they’ve only really said anything about Onions and Potatos
Plants are subject to disease. like we are subject to influnenza and SARS epidemics, and subject to pests, like we are subject to malaria and syphilis pests.
You maintain quarantine because these diseases and pests want to have children and spread out, and they will find a way to do that no matter how unlikely it seems.
One of the ways they do that is by getting into the compost, then into the fertilizer, then into the crops, but experience teaches us that the dam things are persistent and difficult to eradicate. You got to try to stop them everywhere, and all the time, if you want to have any success.
They probably don’t, you’re right, but lets say you put those Canadian Tomatoes on your counter and they have some Canadian Weevils on them that you didn’t notice. It would only be a matter of a few weeks before you’d have a few hundred weevils in your house. Weevils that the US may very well not be protected against. They get out of your house, into your lawn, and do whatever they’ll do. Maybe nothing, maybe your house butts up against some farmland and suddenly we have a problem.
No one threw the Emerald Ash Borer at a bunch of trees but it showed up from oversees and we have to keep cutting down chunks of forest trying to deal with it. Last I heard we were had cut down something like a 100 million ash trees.
Many dangers to crops are not from airborne insect pests, but plant diseases. For example, the Irish potato famine was caused by a disease introduced into Ireland from Mexico.
Yeah and you can see all those bugs lining up at the border waiting to cross. It is a very crude control measure. All you can do is maybe slow it down.
If you ever go to Australia you will see how seriously they take this stuff over there. I used to ship machinery packed in containers to Oz, and the wood we used for cases, and packing, had to be specially treated to kill the bugs and a certificate included.
There were stories about containers which had travelled half way round the world, being returned because the wood inside was not treated.
Returning from the Caribbean, we are questioned not only about fruits/veggies we have in our luggage, but also wether we* have visited *any farms during our travels.
I remember as a kid being stopped at the border because we had a partial bag of fresh oranges that they wouldn’t let through. But my parents (having grown up during the Hoover Depression) absolutely would not throw away food. So we all sat on the side of the road and ate 1-2 oranges apiece before we could cross that border.
