Quarantine - help or hindrance?
When is fruit not a fruit? When it’s an apple.
After watching Border Security a few days ago (painful though it is - the pace is slower than Grey’s Anatomy) I thought the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service was actually doing Australia some good.
But after trying to legitimately import some biological material from the US, AQIS is more of a disservice than a service. Protecting what matters my butt. If I had tried to import the material illegally, it would have made it through fine. But no, I had to go the legal path, and declare everything. And just because there isn’t a word perfect match between “Arabidopsis clones” and “Genetic material” (scientists out there would understand that they are the same thing), my import permit was rejected and my parcel is scheduled to be destroyed tomorrow.
Great. Now my research will be further delayed, trying to communicate with the sender in the US to convince them to write the correct thing on the packing slip so that AQIS doesn’t chuck a spaz and reject the import of apples when the import permit allows all fruits. Some knowledge would come in handy, instead of “duhhhh, I tink dis isn’t same same”.