USDA opens Puerto Rico to Prince Edward Island fresh potatoes

It may be a small victory for Prince Edward Island exporters, but the USDA has opened Puerto Rico for PEI fresh potato shipments.

After Canada voluntarily suspended exports from the PEI in late November because of concerns about detections of potato wart disease, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said Feb. 8 that the USDA has determined that imports of PEI potatoes under specified conditions pose little risk of introducing potato wart disease, a soil-borne disease that reduces yield and marketability, to Puerto Rico.

“It is critical that we base our agricultural trade decisions on sound science,” Vilsack said in a news release. “After considering Puerto Rico’s lack of suitable climatic conditions for potato wart, as well as the lack of a commercial potato production industry on the island, we are confident that, with appropriate mitigations in place, this trade can resume safely, and the U.S. potato industry will remain protected.”

The USDA said potato wart disease is not known to occur in the U.S. and there are no treatments available for its control.

Starting Feb. 9, the USDA said PEI can resume exporting tablestock potatoes in accordance with specific USDA requirements and Canadian Food Inspection Agency mitigations.

 The National Potato Council released a statement in response to the news.

“The National Potato Council welcomes the safe resumption of trade between PEI and Puerto Rico that will allow the province’s growers to market their 2021 crop,” NPC CEO Kam Quarles said in the statement. “We trust USDA and CFIA have put plans in place to strictly prohibit the resale of fresh potatoes to the mainland in order to prevent the potential spread of disease to U.S. potato farms.”

Quarles said in the statement that the U.S. potato industry anticipates the fulfillment of CFIA’s commitment to conduct 35,000 soil tests for the disease in PEI to ensure it has identified which fields are cleared for export.

“That precursor will allow resumption of trade with PEI and the United States, consistent with the best available science,” Quarles said in the statement.

The NPC said that, if potato wart disease were allowed to become established in U.S. potato production areas in the future, the direct costs would likely be more than $300 million annually and billions more annually in indirect damage.