Border ag inspecting called 'in a shambles'

WASHINGTON -- Agricultural border inspections remain hindered by the transfer of inspectors to the Department of Homeland Security, lawmakers and investigators agreed Wed-nesday.

Morale is low, pest interceptions are down and offices are shorthanded. Taken together, some fear the problems could threaten American agriculture if more pests and diseases can slide across U.S. borders.

"The only conclusion I can reach is that the process of border inspections is in a shambles," Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, said at a House hearing.

Improvements in training, staffing and equipment are on the way, investigators added. For now, though, the political odds are stacked against the most sweeping proposals to shift several thousand Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service workers back to the Agriculture Department.

The Department of Homeland Security absorbed the agricultural inspectors when Congress created the sprawling security agency in 2002. From the start, the inspectors focusing on food felt oppressed in a department led by pistol-packing supervisors focused on terrorists.

"They treated the (agricultural) staff as either garbage collectors or bug collectors," House Agriculture Committee investigator John Jurich reported Wednesday.

Cardoza chairs the House horticulture and organic agriculture subcommittee, and he convened the Wednesday hearing to listen to Jurich and other investigators. After interviewing more than 250 officials, Jurich reported that the transfer of inspectors has been "both traumatic and quite polarizing," with harmful consequences for the job of protecting U.S. agriculture.

Illustrating the high stakes, Cardoza noted the 114-square-mile quarantine area recently established around the Solano County town of Dixon following discovery of Mediterranean fruit fly larvae.

California farmers fear the horticulturally voracious Medfly can enter the United States from other countries.

The Customs and Border Protection agency currently has 2,116 agriculture specialists but needs 3,154, according to the agency's own estimates. The agricultural inspection rate fell at ports including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Miami following the transfer, government figures show.

At one port Jurich visited, officials refused to buy a replacement bulb needed for a microscope used by agricultural inspectors. At another, inspectors were working out of the trunks of their cars because they lacked desks and bookcases.

"The transfer was a well-intended effort that just didn't work," Joel Nelsen, president of the Exeter-based California Citrus Mutual, told the subcommittee.

Cardoza and his allies pushed legislation earlier this year to move the agricultural inspectors back to the Agriculture Department. The language made it into a farm bill approved by the House Agriculture Committee in July. But in the face of strong Bush administration resistance, and the likelihood that the transfer would be rejected by the Senate, the legislation was stripped out before the overall farm bill reached the House floor.

The Department of Homeland Security has "taken steps" to strengthen the agricultural inspection program, Government Accountability Office official Lisa Shames noted. For instance, newly hired Customs and Border Protection officers now receive 16 hours of training on agricultural issues, compared with the four hours of training previously offered.

Three-quarters of the border officers now tell the GAO that they have received sufficient training, Shames testified. In addition, field offices have now added agriculture liaisons.

About the writer:

• The Bee's Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com.