Canada’s Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau says potato exports can resume as soon as the U.S. reviews and approves data from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), according to a video report by the CBC.
“From the beginning we believe this was a serious phytosanitary issue,” the Minister says. “And we believed it would be solved through science. … We had this meeting with secretary Vilsack, and I think he clearly understood the sensitivity of the issue, and clearly directed the head of APHIS to proceed as prodigiously as possible with analysis of table potatoes to the mainland at first…
“So our Canadian agencies are very confident that table stock potatoes can be exported with very negligible risk. So, we are hopeful to open the market for table stock potatoes within a week…”
Source: CBC. Full story here and watch the interview
Photo: Courtesy Toronto Star
