ORANGES AT THE BORDER

Preventing diseased fruit and invasive plants from entering the United States is necessary, but inspecting all trucks entering from Canada and charging trucks, ships and airline passengers to pay for the inspections doesn’t appear to be the right approach.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which last month released a broad rule requiring new inspections and fees, should gather comments from industries that routinely ship products across the border and better explain why the changes are necessary. It should also look for solutions, such as working with existing border security and inspection programs, which won’t unnecessarily slow down cross-border commerce.

Commercial traffic from Canada has been exempt from U.S. rules requiring inspections of and fees from commercial conveyances and international air passengers entering this country because Canadian agricultural exports traditionally are grown in Canada and do not harbor pests or plants of concern to the United States.

Because of Canada’s growing cultural diversity and its less stringent rules on plant pests, the Department of Agriculture says it now needs to inspect goods headed to the United States. It also says, repeatedly in the 18-page notice of the new rule, that it needs to raise more money to cover the cost of the existing as well as proposed new inspections.

Under the rule, which is slated to go into effect Nov. 24, all commercial conveyances crossing from Canada to the United States, regardless of what they are carrying, will be subject to inspection. Whether they are inspected or not, all will have to pay a fee.

The fee for trucks is $5.25 per crossing or $105 per year. Airline passengers will be charged $5 in addition to the $70.25 initially charged to commercial aircraft arriving from Canada. Fees for railroad cars start at $7.50 and ships will pay $488 if the rule is implemented as written.

Domtar Industries, which operates a mill in Baileyville, fears that the inspections will cause long and unnecessary delays at the border that will harm many industries, not just paper mills awaiting chips or logs from Canada.

The Canadian government also objects to the rules. One of the few cases the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses to justify the rule is the 2004 interception of Spanish oranges and Dutch peppers labeled as products of Canada. In its comments, the Canadian embassy says it was never made aware of this problem and would have worked with the United States to enforce laws against such re-labeling if it had been.

Better coordination with Canada, as exemplified in the Customs and Trade in Partnership Against Terrorism – which allows shipments that follow agreed-upon tracking requirements to use “fast lanes” at high volume border crossings – may be a better way to ensure unwanted plants and insects are kept out of the United States.

If the department needs more money to conduct legitimate inspections, it should receive those funds from Congress or shippers that pose real risks.