plants

Okay, Times Square, you had your big New Year’s Eve bash.  Now it’s time to usher in the Asian Lunar New Year—the Year of the Dragon—which starts on January 23.  Many Asian Americans and their friends are looking forward to enjoying traditional foods, gifts, and parades during this holiday of great cultural significance.

If you’re in on the celebration, you may find it tempting to import tastes of Asia for the festivities.  You may be ordering online or bringing food back from a trip overseas.  USDA is eager to provide you with the information you need to ensure that these items won’t harm America’s agricultural and natural resources.  Some agricultural items from certain Asian countries could be carrying pests or diseases that could seriously damage America’s crops, livestock, forests, rangeland, or community landscapes.  Avoiding these items will help make the Year of the Dragon a prosperous and happy one.

USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) recently hosted two examiners from China who were on hand to learn the U.S. system for examining new plant variety applications.

AMS’s Plant Variety Protection Office and the American Seed Trade Association invited Yang Yang and Lingo Gao from China’s Ministry of Agriculture to work to improve global intellectual property protection. The two countries are working toward harmonizing their respective plant variety protection systems.

In any large organization, it can be easy to overlook the contributions of individuals, each with unique stories and perspective. With this in mind, USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was proud to mark the 250^th anniversary of the veterinary profession by offering a series of weekly blogs showcasing a different APHIS veterinarian each Thursday. Written in first person, the “world veterinary year” blogs share career paths - from dream to reality – and put a face on the sometimes overlooked aspects of 'on-the-ground' USDA employees. It is this creative use of social media to effectively showcase the rich personality of our workforce that makes this series our number 4 favorite new media moment.

World Veterinary Year, celebrating the 250^th anniversary of the veterinary profession, culminated in the 30th World Veterinary Congress Closing Ceremony in Cape Town, South Africa in October. This year of recognition provided the opportunity to share the many contributions veterinarians have made in communities around the globe. There is much to celebrate. Over the last century, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and our animal health partners have made great strides in the control and eradication of animal diseases in the United States, diseases like brucellosis and tuberculosis. Worldwide, we applaud the milestone reached with the stamping out of the deadly cattle disease, rinderpest, also known as cattle plague.

APHIS employs more than 700 veterinarians, many engaged in such disease eradication work. Over the past months, we have featured 25 APHIS veterinarians in this blog space. To share more of the vital work our veterinarians do, we’ve also created a video, soon to be available on our YouTube channel.

If you are looking to give a thoughtful, healthy gift this holiday season, citrus is the way to go. But beware of infected citrus fruit and plants, especially if you plan to buy citrus online.

Before you give citrus, here are four things you should know:

Importing foods from abroad can make the holidays more meaningful and fun. But please take care when bringing any food or agricultural items into the United States—whether you’re returning from an international trip or ordering online. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) restricts or prohibits many foreign foods and agricultural items from entering the United States. Why? They could be carrying pests or diseases that could threaten human health or devastate the environment, crops, agricultural animals, ornamental plants, and gardens.

Invasive pests threaten agricultural jobs and raise our food prices by damaging crops, costing millions of dollars in treatments to farmers and government agencies, and closing foreign markets to U.S. products from infested areas. They also feast on America’s natural resources, disrupting and harming our environment. These pests push out native species that provide food and habitat to wildlife, reduce biological diversity, kill forest trees, place other species at increased risk of extinction, and alter wildfire intensity and frequency.

Hello, I’m Dr. Karen James-Preston. I’m work for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, as Director of the Veterinary Services’ National Center for Import and Export, Animal Products. My staff and I work every day to make sure animal products are safely imported into the United States. We also work to facilitate the export of animal products to other countries. My job is fulfilling because I’m part of the team that’s protecting the domestic livestock and poultry population from disease, as well as helping our agriculture industry move products abroad.

My path to becoming a veterinarian was non-traditional, to say the least. My undergraduate degree is actually in Art Education. Even though my plan for college was math, I somehow ended up in the art department. While I was at Howard University, I got my first pet, a toy poodle named Oatmeal. After a while, my friends asked why I didn’t want to become a veterinarian… and I didn’t have a good answer. Now I wasn’t a great artist, so I decided to pursue a veterinary career. I needed additional science courses to get into vet school, but luckily I was able to take those classes at University of Maryland and get into the vet school at Tuskegee, Alabama.

Hello, I’m Dr. Terry Morris, a veterinarian with USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Veterinary Regulatory Support (VRS) staff, where I’m currently the acting Assistant Director.  I’m responsible for managing VRS’ 17 Agriculture Quarantine Inspection Veterinary Medical Officers that are strategically located throughout the United States, including ensuring that they have all of the necessary knowledge, equipment, supplies, and regulatory support necessary to effectively safeguard the U.S. from foreign plant and animal diseases at the local level.  I’ve been with USDA APHIS since 2001.  I started out in USDA’s Veterinary Services National Center for Import and Export program and then came over to the VRS staff in 2007.

How did I choose to become a veterinarian?  When I was in sixth grade, my dog died and my family was unable to afford any expenses associated with determining the cause of death.  I wanted to know why my dog died.  I took it upon myself to become a veterinarian, both to learn why and so that I could prevent other people’s pets from dying.

USDA sponsors many great programs like the “Feds Feed Families” employee food drive, gleaning fruit from research farms, and harvesting vegetables from the People’s Gardens to provide food for the hungry.  The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Wildlife Services (WS) program has taken a unique approach to feeding the hungry.  Last year in the Eastern Region, WS donated more than 74 tons of venison to food banks and charitable organizations.  WS employees are proud to be able to provide for those in need by utilizing these animals, which are lethally removed at the request of local individuals and agencies.

WS provides assistance when wildlife causes problems.  In this case, the venison was collected from white-tailed deer that were taken for safety and protection purposes.  The population of deer has grown from one-quarter million nationally in 1900 to more than 17 million today.  Some locations request WS to remove deer to prevent wildlife strikes at airports and vehicle-deer collisions.  When herds become locally over-abundant, populations also can mean damage to threatened and endangered plant species and to public and private property.

Hello, I’m Dr. David Dargatz.  I work as an epidemiologist and beef cattle specialist for USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Centers for Epidemiology and Animal Health in Fort Collins, Colorado.  My work includes coordinating/conducting national studies of health and management practices on beef cattle operations as part of the National Animal Health Monitoring System (NAHMS).  I’ve been with APHIS since 1988.  In the past, I’ve also worked on NAHMS dairy and swine studies.

Like many other veterinarians, I became interested in veterinary medicine from exposure to the local practitioners in my home town.  My family had horses and needed the services of a veterinarian from time to time.  The two practitioners in the local clinic encouraged me to ride with them on calls and spend some time in the clinic to see what veterinary practice was like.  By the time I was halfway through high school, I knew this was the profession for me – it allowed me to combine my interests in horses and other livestock, science, and being outdoors.