Here is something you may not have thought of. USDA is partnering with Customs and Border Protection for Valentine’s Day.
The two agencies are making sure your flowers are safe. Imported flowers go through Customs and Border Protection along with foreign chocolates and other gifts.
Any questionable packages head over the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
APHIS’s Louis Volpe states, “Any pest or disease or anything found there that’s in question, those interceptions will then come to us, and we’ll do the identification on those and make the determination on those.”
Volpe works out of APHIS’s Miami office where 80 percent of foreign flowers are imported.
