Yesterday, the US began easing its lockdown on Prince Edward Island potatoes, after having reached an ‘understanding’ with Ottawa four months after concerns about a soil-borne fungus first blocked one of the province's most famous exports. This means that exports of potatoes from Prince Edward Island will soon be able to resume to the United States, months after Canada suspended shipments to that country because of the detection of potato wart.
Canada stopped sending P.E.I. potatoes to the US in November, a decision designed to pre-empt an all-out ban after potato wart fungus -an otherwise harmless disease that disfigures potatoes and reduces crop yields- was detected in several fields on the Island last fall.
That decision, coupled with the time it took the US Department of Agriculture to finally issue the all-clear, has cost growers upwards of $50 million in lost revenue and convinced some that neither Ottawa nor Washington was particularly interested in resolving the dispute.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Thursday that ‘sound science’ underpins all the USDA's agricultural trade decisions: "We are confident that table-stock potatoes can enter the United States with appropriate safeguards in place to ensure the US potato industry remains protected.”
Those safeguards, to be detailed in a forthcoming federal order, will include "additional required mitigations" to protect potato growers south of the border. Details of that order are to be published within the next 10 business days, a USDA official said.
Statement from the National Potato Council
The National Potato Council has issued a statement in response to the USDA announcement on the resumption of the trade. It read: “We are dismayed to learn that USDA is allowing PEI table stock potatoes to resume shipments to the US prior to completing soil tests for the destructive potato wart disease."
"Potato wart has been found in Prince Edward Island in eight of the past 10 years, and in a total of 33 potato fields since 2000. The frequency of finds -plus the dramatic drop in the number of disease tests via soil samples- should make US regulators question the prevalence of the disease on the island."
Source: coastreporter.net
