Worried about crop smuggling, USDA imposes new fees on Canadian fliers, transport
Rise of tropical fruit smuggling worries USDA; $5 fee to be imposed on airline travellers; $5.25 for trucks, $7.50 for every railway car, and $488 on each maritime vessel
American security planners have a lot on their plate. Fruit, to be exact. Reacting to a worrisome rise in guava and mango smuggling, U.S. officials anounced recently that Canadian airline passengers will soon have to pay an additional $5 fee to offset U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection costs. USDA officials said that a NAFTA-inspired 80 percent increase in agricultural imports from Canada had inadvertently encouraged a large amount of illegal smuggling. Canadian importation rules are more relaxed than in the United States because its cooler climate is not amenable to foreign crop invasion. “Among Canadian air passengers, the number of quarantined materials intercepted by U.S. inspectors rose to 1,520 in 2004 from 358 in 2001,” Canada.com reported.
Canada, naturally enough, is not happy about these developments, nor are airlines, which are already concerned about soaring air travel costs. Commercial vehicles will also face increased charges, including a $5.25 levy on trucks, $7.50 on every railway car and $488 on each maritime vessel entering the U.S, but passenger cars — one major mode of smuggling — will remain unscathed.
-read more in Sheldon Alberts’s and Meagan Fitzpatrick’s Canada.com report
