During the American Seed Trade Association annual convention committees meet to set policies for the organization for the coming year. One of those is the phytosanitary committee. I visited with Darrell Maddox, Endless Sky Partners, about the work of this committee that he used to chair.
Darrell says the committee works with USDA-APHIS to facilitate trade. They work with seed companies as well as regulatory agencies through ASTA to resolve issues. He says that in the last couple of years they’ve tried to be more proactive on these issues. One way is to put better standards in place with sound science behind them. Darrell says that Brazil and Mexico tend to be challenging markets in part because there seems to be a frequent change of people to work with. Looking ahead he says the new committee leadership hopes to proactively work with the Asian countries to try to get them all on the same page as how the U.S. and Europe look at phytosanitary issues. He says they’re ultimately looking for an international “seed standard,” but are not quite there yet.
Listen to my interview with Darrell here: Interview with Darrell Maddox