"The Americans feel the risk is too high for them," he said. The situation highlights a difference of opinion between the United States and Canada over the threat the fungus poses.Ĭanada's new safety measures, such as brushing and washing potatoes to remove soil, makes the risk negligible, Bailey said on a conference call.
"We look forward to working with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as they delimit the infestation and trace the sources so that appropriate mitigation measures can be imposed and trade restrictions relaxed."įresh potatoes can still move to other Canadian provinces, said David Bailey, Canada's acting chief plant health officer. "I appreciate Canada’s action to suspend the movement of all potatoes from Prince Edward Island to the United States," said U.S. The decision does not apply to processed products. In response, Canada also suspended exports of fresh PEI potatoes, including potatoes for table use and processing, to the United States. The United States notified Canada that it would ban all imports of PEI fresh potatoes unless Canada took further action. In 84 years of export trade to more than 40 countries, he noted, there had never been a single finding of potato wart from Canada.Canada halted movement of PEI seed potatoes to the United States on Nov. during the Maryland outbreak in the form of scientists, technologists and laboratories were once again used in this investigation," agency director Robert Carberry wrote his U.S. "The same Canadian expertise that was turned to by the U.S.
"disrespect" for the science conducted by the food- inspection agency. "We do not recognize this imposition since I assume we still have sovereign authority within our own country."īut what galled some Canadian authorities even more was what a New Brunswick official described as U.S. to express their arrogance and demand that Canada segregate the most intensive potato geography of our entire industry," Paul Jelley, PEI's deputy minister of agriculture, wrote the president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency on Dec. officials reopened the border to PEI's 2000 potato crop - with conditions - but they are still deciding whether to allow shipments of this year's crop. Even shipments to other provinces were stopped in case the Americans made good on threats to ban their potatoes too. PEI farmers lost an estimated $30-million. Thanksgiving and Christmas markets while farmers in Idaho and Washington cashed in on bumper crops. Still, PEI spuds were denied access to the lucrative U.S. More than 46,540 hectares of potatoes are grown on Prince Edward Island. Fifteen were positive - all from the same 0.1 hectare where a man had a vegetable garden and fed his pigs. Inspectors from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency took nearly 300,000 soil samples from 74 fields. Potato shipments to Canada continued uninterrupted and Canadian laboratories - the same ones that the Americans second-guessed in the winter - ultimately helped eradicate the fungus in Maryland, the documents say.īy contrast, Canadian authorities informed the Americans of the PEI problem within 48 hours. authorities did not bother to inform their Canadian counterparts, documents obtained under the Access to Information Act show. Yet when the same potato-wart fungus was discovered in Maryland in 1987, U.S.
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