The National Service of Agricultural Food Health and Quality (Senasa) ordered the destruction of 327,400 seedlings of strawberries that had been shipped in 319 boxes from the United States and were being sent to a nursery in Plottier. The cargo was entering the country from Chile.
The professionals of the Senasa in the Pino Hachado border inspection post detected "the presence of soil in the seedling's roots and in the containers, which constitutes a risk of importance for Northern Patagonia and the country, as this is a source of transmission of pests and diseases" said the Coordinator of Patagonia's plant health, quality and protection, Esteban Rial.
Rial said that, when shipped, these "plants should be washed in origin and the root should be clean."
The ban on the entry of soil into the country is framed in the international standards for phytosanitary measures relating to the regulation of imports. In this sense, Rial said that in these cases "the regulations of the International Plant Protection Committee established that they had to destroy the cargo of a shipment that didn't comply with import regulations."
Thus, to protect the country and "after having had the cargo in quarantine cold storage, all of the cargo was incinerated, as stipulated by the regulations," Rial said.