> we need an inspection health
> certificate 10 days before shipment
Yes, you do. How else would you know if you were
shipping disease-free and pest-free bees? Since
Canada has very few SPS/WTO "reportable" diseases
or pests, the list of things that one need inspect
for is very limited.
> Draconian to say the least.
Only if you have no disease/pest control program.
If you have no disease/pest control program, you
shouldn't be shipping bees anywhere, not even
between provinces within Canada.
> Regretfully, it would seem the trade protectionists
> in the American legislature have won again!!
This is a laughably misinformed foaming at the mouth.
First, no "American legislature" had anything to do
with the imposition of the new requirements. Both the
US and Canada are WTO participants, and their respective
WTO negotiators AGREED to these rules, likely without
every considering the impact on people who want to ship
live animals. The rules are less taxing when one is
shipping something that is not a living creature.
Second there is nothing "protectionist" in these regs.
They are imposed on shipments from Canada simply because
they MUST be imposed, or the US faces charges of showing
favoritism to Canada versus other countries that want to
ship bees to the USA.
> Canada bashing is getting to be a way of life!
Sorry, everything is not all about you.
The US had no choice in the matter, and if you had spoken
for even 5 minutes with anyone else who shipped goods from
Canada to the US, you might be able to learn a little about
how to export in the 21st Century. We can't have one set
of regulations for Canada, and another for everyone else.
No one can. We have WTO, NAFTA, and a pile of other trade
agreements, and none of them really work for the unique case
of shipping live bees. If you'd like to "fix it", I'd love
to help, but first you have to learn a bit about how the
current regulations work (and don't work well for bees).
When the US wants to "bash Canada", it is easy enough for one
of our hockey teams to take away the Stanley Cup for yet another
year. As I recall, last year it was a team from Florida, where
the skating rinks have to be painstakingly hand-assembled from
individual ice cubes ordered from room service. That must have
really hurt, eh?
If any bee producers in Canada want to get
serious about shipping bees, I am happy to
assist them - Lord knows I've done my homework
on this issue just to write articles about
the whole mess.
Some Buckfast bees that were closer to the
actual "Brother Adam" Buckfast bees would be
nice to have for many people, and the cold-tolerant
bees are very useful to beekeepers in the
Northern tier of US states.
But I can't help anyone who is so misinformed
to think that this was some sort of deliberate
plan to "bash Canada".