USDA Investigators Outline Details of Suspicious Seed Deliveries

WASHINGTON, DC – In today’s current news cycle, some stories and issues fall off the radar without any follow-up. One of those might have been the issue of American’s unsolicited receiving seeds in the mail from China. Last week, USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced details of their investigation and found no evidence that some party was intentionally trying to harm U.S. agriculture with these shipments. While APHIS confirmed that some of the seeds were sent to the United States unsolicited, others were seeds the recipients ordered—unaware they were coming from a foreign country. Regardless, most of the seed shipments were illegal because they entered the United States without a permit or a phytosanitary certificate. In fact, there is no correlation between where the seeds were sent and U.S. critical agriculture infrastructure. APHIS officials believe the unsolicited packages are part of an internet “brushing scam” where sellers will often ship inexpensive items to increase transactions. The more transactions a seller completes, the higher their rating and the more likely that their items will appear at the top of search results on an e-commerce site.
(SOURCE: All Ag News)