Pest prompts potato import ban

BOISE – Japan has banned all fresh U.S. potato imports, and Canada and Mexico all fresh potato imports from Idaho, after a microscopic wormlike pest called the potato cyst nematode was found on an eastern Idaho farm this week.

The discovery of the pest was the first time this particular nematode has been detected in the United States, said Pat Takasugi, director of Idaho’s Department of Agriculture.

Takasugi said Friday he doesn’t expect any U.S. states to ban Idaho potatoes, because his agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have quarantined fields and a shed at the farm where the nematodes were found.

“We have definitely caught this in the early stages,” Takasugi said.

The bans by the three countries only involve fresh potatoes, not those processed into french fries and other food products.

The pest is not harmful to humans and doesn’t have any effect on the potatoes themselves, Takasugi said. But it feeds on the roots of the potato plant and can reduce crop production by as much as 80 percent.

Idaho is the nation’s largest potato producer, growing about one-third of all the potatoes in the United States. Last year, the state produced 12.5 billion pounds of potatoes that paid farmers about $700 million, said Frank Muir, president of the Idaho Potato Commission. Muir estimated the industry is worth about $2 billion to the state.

There are several nematodes that affect potato crops; a cousin to the one found in Idaho has been found in New York and British Columbia and has prompted Canada to impose some trade restrictions on New York potatoes, said Alain Boucher, a seed potato specialist with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The nematode found in Idaho also has been detected in the eastern Canadian province of Newfoundland, Takasugi said.

“It’s a major pest in a potato state,” said Takasugi, adding that 500 acres of fields at the farm where the nematode was found have been quarantined, as well as the shed used for potato storage. “That’s why we’ve taken the most extreme measures to confine and isolate.”

Potato industry experts hastened to assure consumers that the pest is not harmful to humans and that the two nematodes found were discovered after years of intensive testing.

The state Agriculture Department has been testing soil samples for more than 20 years, Takasugi said.

The department has taken more than 10,000 samples in the last three years alone, “on soil, in farms, and on processing plants, and every one has been negative for the potato cyst nematode until this one find,” Muir said. “Our researchers literally found the needle in the haystack.”

Farmers, too, do their own tests for this nematode, said Keith Esplin, a former potato grower who is executive director of the Potato Growers of Idaho in Blackfoot.

“All indications are that it’s a very minor infestation,” Esplin said. “We want to be careful we don’t spread it around or introduce it, but it doesn’t appear that that’s happened. I think we caught it in time.”

It was not immediately clear how much the Canadian, Mexican, and Japanese markets are worth to Idaho. The annual value of all fresh potato exports from the United States is $100 million, said Melissa O’Dell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Canada is Idaho’s largest export market for fresh potatoes, Muir said. Idaho produces one-third of the U.S. potatoes shipped to Mexico.

Idaho has invited Japan, Mexico and Canada to send health inspectors to observe how Idaho was handling the infestation, and Takasugi and Muir said they were confident all three countries would soon reopen trading.

“After they see the data, the tests, and everything we’ve done, the recommendation will probably be to lift that ban,” Takasugi said.