In 2002 alone, approximately 50,000 flower shipments arrived in California. Those shipments included nearly 227 million stems composed of 315 different types of cut flowers. Checking for pests in that many cut flowers is an arduous, time-consuming job for agricultural inspectors, so in 1999, the USDA developed the Cut Flower Release Program. While many of the people responsible for making it work have moved into the Department of Homeland Security, the program remains a critical part of our ongoing effort to protect America's crops.

The cut flower risk management plan
The Center for Plant Health Science and Technology under USDA established guidelines for the program. The method used to establish the guidelines was to assess the risk potential for pests in high-volume country/flower combinations. From the universe of cut flowers imported into the United States, the Center sampled shipments from Columbia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Guatemala that came through the port of Miami.

The test criteria included measuring how many and what kinds of pests were found in the number of shipments of a particular type of flower from each country. For example, so many pests were found in shipments of chrysanthemums from Colombia that these shipments received a high-risk rating.

After piloting the flower release program in Miami in 2001, the Center felt that the pilot represented the general pest infestation numbers for cut flower imports for the rest of the country. Miami, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Juan, and JFK airport officially implemented the flower release program this year.

How does the program work in practice?
Cut flowers are classified before they arrive into three categories of risk: low, moderate, and high levels of infestation. Following guidelines developed by the plant health center, inspectors selectively release high-volume, low-risk flower shipments without inspection. This gives inspectors time to concentrate on shipments that pose a higher risk of infestation. It also allows for a systematic sampling of flowers in order to provide a more accurate measure of pest risk while maintaining effective safeguards against the introduction of foreign agricultural pests and diseases.

Flower of the day
Does participating in the Cut Flower Release program guarantee that low-risk shipments will always be allowed into the country with no inspection? Not really. But it does mean that flowers classified low-risk will be inspected a lot less often. Agricultural inspectors will inspect country/flower combinations-that is, particular species of flowers from a particular country-that are rated low risk and that have a pest frequency of less than one percent per year on randomly selected days each month-the "flower of the day."

Each country and flower combination will be inspected two or three times every month. USDA's Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) division in Riverdale, Md., will provide CBP inspectors with a schedule for what flowers to inspect and when to inspect them. PPQ will also provide an annual schedule to CBP agricultural inspectors detailing which country/flower combination to inspect each day.

The risks associated with imported cut flowers change over time for several reasons. For one, the volume of flowers that are imported changes from year to year. And bug populations change too: the species of pests and the size of their populations change, grow, and move from country to country.

For these reasons, PPQ will evaluate the Cut Flower Release Program annually. As the program uncovers new problems-significant pest finds or incidents of smuggling, for example-the Cut Flower Release Program will change in order to keep the enormous volume of imported flowers as pest-free as possible.

For now, however, the flowers that bring us such joy will continue to come into the United States, and agricultural inspectors will continue to look them over carefully for hidden pests.