LiveWire

I marvel at the government’s diligence and tenacity in keeping things and people who don’t belong in the country from staying here. If necessary, Customs and Border Protection will examine every grain of rice coming into this country to stop the world’s most dangerous pest from entering. That would be the Khapra beetle, a tiny insect that can destroy crops.

Customs inspectors in Baltimore keep pests out

The sweet aroma of rice fills the air as David Ng steps forward in a Southeast Baltimore warehouse to inspect a shipment of hundreds of sacks of imported basmati rice. He folds back the stitched seams of the 40-pound burlap sacks holding grain that have traveled halfway around the world to Baltimore’s Seagirt Marine Terminal.

Ng is a supervisory agricultural inspector with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency charged with keeping things and people who don’t belong in the country from staying here. Some agency employees concentrate on people, but Ng’s office works to keep bad stuff from making its way onto the American market.

Ng can offer a rogue’s gallery of the agency’s most-wanted species. They include the brown marmorated stink bug, an insect believed to be of Chinese origin that can devastate orchards and fruit crops; the emerald ash borer, which has already killed 42,000 of Maryland’s most widely planted tree; and the Asian longhorn beetle, which damages maple trees and nursery stock, and has caused $41 billion in losses to U.S. agriculture. Then there was the infamous Mediterranean fruit fly, an invasive insect that caused more than $100 million in damage to California crops as that state waged a headline-grabbing war against it in 1982 and 1983.

If only the government applied the same effort in keeping people who don’t belong in the country from entering and staying here. I certainly don’t equate human illegal immigrants to bugs. The differences are vast and many. One significant difference is that the Khapra beetle will never vote in U.S. elections.