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Import of plant from USA
michael adams wrote:
"Mike Lyle" wrote in message ... Broadening the discussion, I wonder if it's time to stop the importation of plants altogether. Is the, perhaps minor, increased risk of introducing pests and diseases worth it, balanced against any, perhaps modest, benefit? -- Mike. As a matter of interest which particular types of plants and pests did you have in mind ? Surely most economically beneficial and or horticulturally interesting plants will have already been imported by now. I think that would be part of my point, if I'd reached the stage of having a clear point. I said I was wondering: I wasn't preaching. The plants we now import _are_ generally horticulturally interesting rather than economically beneficial, and, by Heaven, we import an awful lot of them. Almost anything we actually need, economically or scientifically, can come in as seed or tissue cultures: the problem is likely to be what comes in with growing plants. The quarantine provisions for these are insecure. In addition, presumably both plants and pests need suitable climatic conditions to survive unaided. So this limits concern to plants and pests originating in temperate zones similar to our own. And, of course and inevitably, those are the regions from which most of our imports come. Call that a limit if you like, and I couldn't argue; but it's a very wide limit. Whereas if it was case of importing exotic plants and accompanying pests from Borneo then the remedy would simply be to turn the greenhouse heating off in winter. Much plant material including fungi, migrate naturally along with other forms of wild life, birds, insects, in any case without any help or hindrance from the human race. Regulations or no regulations. Well, that's all obvious. But the fewer the imports, the fewer, and the smaller in number, the accompanying species: that's reasonably obvious, too. I'm not one to fly into mindless conniptions about sudden oak death, mitten crabs, invasive freshwater crayfish, grey squirrels, NZ flatworms, Dutch elm disease, scorpions on the Isle of Sheppey, and all of those: but I've been thinking about it for years -- as has Professor Brasier of Forest Research and Imperial College. He reckons "We don't move large numbers of animals around the world for disease reasons, and we shouldn't do it for plants either." Brasier, as I mentioned in another post, has just presented a paper on the subject at a DEFRA-backed RHS conference. He may be wrong; but that doesn't make the issue trivial, or liable to summary dismissal by minor verbal debating points. -- Mike. |
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