Frankfort, Kentucky – The USDA and agriculture officials in several states have issued warnings about unsolicited shipments of foreign seeds and urged other Americans to plant them.
“The USDA is aware that other Americans who drive through the country have won suspicious and unsolicited packages of seeds that appear to be from China,” the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) said Tuesday.
He said he was working hard with federal and state partners, adding Customs and Border Protection to investigate.
“Please don’t plant seeds of unknown origin!” The firm tweeted.
In Kentucky, the National Department of Agriculture received the warning that several citizens had won unsolicited seed packages mailed from China, Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles previously said. The seed bureaucracy is unknown and could be harmful, he said, and emphasized that they should not be planted.
“We have no idea what they are, and we can’t threaten to damage the apple in agricultural production in the United States,” he said. “We have the safest and most abundant food source in the world and we have to keep it that way.”
Anyone in Kentucky who receives packages of foreign or unknown seeds touches the state Department of Agriculture immediately, Quarles said.
“Right now we don’t have enough direct information to master whether it’s a hoax, a joke, an internet scam or an act of agricultural bioterrorism,” he said. “Unsolicited seeds could be invasive and introduce unknown diseases to local plants, damage livestock or threaten our environment.”
Residents of no less than 8 states have now won suspicious packages of seeds that look like China, and officials urge other Americans not to plant them, according to Reuters news agency.
APHIS said the USDA collects seed packs from the people who won them and we checked their contents to see if they involve anything that “could be outrageous to U.S. agriculture or the environment.”
But he also said that as of Tuesday, “he had no evidence that there was anything to do with a “brushing scam” in which other Americans get unsolicited pieces from a merchant who then posts fake guest patches to expose the latest sales of friends.”
In North Carolina, the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said they were contacted through large apples that had earned shipments of seeds they had not ordered. The firm said the shipments were probably the product of the foreign Internet scam called “roce”.
“According to the Better Business Bureau, foreign third-party distributors use their clothing and Amazon reporting to generate a fake sale and positive review for product ratings,” said Phil Wilson, director of the state’s plant production division.
New York Agriculture Commissioner Richard Ball said on a Monday that his workplace had also responded to “some” requests from citizens who had won “allegedly unsolicited packages shipped from China that are marked as jewelry and actually involving plant seeds.”
Ball proved that the USDA was investigating and told citizens not to look for or plant the seeds.
He said anyone who gets a packet of seeds “should store them safely in a place children and pets cannot access,” and then email the USDA immediately at [email protected] with their full names and phone numbers, pictures of the packaging, “and any other relevant information.”
The USDA recommended anyone receiving an unsolicited seed package to contact their plant regulatory officer or APHIS Plant Health Director immediately. “Replace the seeds and packaging, adding the post label, until someone from your State Department of Agriculture or APHIS touches it with additional instructions. Don’t sow seeds of unknown origin,” he said Tuesday.
Maryland agriculture officials said in a tweet that they were working with the USDA to analyze the seeds sent to citizens there and warned other Americans to plant them.
The Virginia Department of Agriculture issued a warning.
“The red tape of the seeds in the packaging is unknown and could be invasive plant species. The packages were mailed and could bring Chinese tickets,” the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said last week. and add: “Please don’t plant those seeds.”