>> "Colony collapse is widely distributed around the U.S.," 
>> Weaver said. "It's not going to do any good to close off 
>> imports from Australia if the pathogen is already here."

> I had to laugh about the widely distributed claim. What a joke.


Strictly speaking, Danny is "correct" in his assessment,
as he is echoing the view of the WTO of this sort of
trade issue.  And the width of the spread is immaterial.

Regardless of personal interpretations of the term "wide",
and regardless of the accuracy of self-reporting "surveys"
used to list states as "affected" or not, there is a
little problem with "closing off imports" of bees.

The US has no right to do such a thing under WTO rules.
Not even if we had Arlo Guthrie's "twenty-seven 8x10 
colored glossy photographs with circles and arrows and 
a paragraph on the back of each one explainin' what 
each one was, to be used as evidence..." (each photo,
of course, showing a tiny little IAPV beastie wearing 
a Newcastle Jets tee shirt, holding a stubby of Foster's 
in one hand, and a dying bee in the other).

We have no quarantines in place that might stop the
spread of CCD or anything else.  We have no "national
veterinary authority" over beekeeping.  We don't even have
regular sampling and testing done to determine what pests
and diseases of bees are where.

All these things add up to only one possible interpretation
in the eyes of the WTO - the lower 48 states of the USA is
one single reporting area, and any disease or pest found
anywhere in the lower 48 states is inherently assumed to be 
everywhere in the lower 48 states.

And, under WTO rules, if you "have" a disease or pest,
you cannot block imports from elsewhere unless you
impose equally draconian measures (quarantines) on
your own producers of the same item to protect some
geographic region from infestation.  Assuming, of course
that you had proof of a region free of the infestation
as a result of the above-mentioned regular sampling done
by a "national veterinary authority".  And also assuming
you even had vague plans to form a "national veterinary 
authority" for apiculture "real soon now", which we don't.

All this was explained in detail in 2002 and 2005
in Bee Culture, here and here:
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/apis_bc.pdf
http://bee-quick.com/reprints/regs.pdf


Further, what was found is claimed to be "genetic evidence 
of a specific virus".  They have yet to find an actual virus
itself.  They may have merely found evidence of prior exposure
to this virus, perhaps several bee generations back.  

Still further, there was ONE SAMPLE from Australia found
to show the same "genetic evidence of a specific virus".
Having only one sample is opening oneself to a wide range 
of critiques, from "cross-contamination of samples" to 
simple human error. (No one has seen the specific raw 
genetic sequence run data, or the sample metadata, so there 
is also the potential for a claim that the data was 
misread/misinterpreted/mangled/whatever.)

So, what has been suggested by (so far) the ABF, the AHPA,
and least two US Senators is... what?

Nothing less than US implementation of the "Precautionary 
Principle", as made famous in world trade by the EU nations?

If you've never heard of it before, the idea is simple - it 
forces the exporter to prove that something is safe, rather 
than keeping the burden of proof on the importing nation.  
Any doubts, and "no thank you" to those exports.

Given that the USA is everyone's biggest customer for all sorts
of goods, the number of complaints that would be filed as a
result of the US adopting the Precautionary Principle (or 
something akin to it) would bury Brussels under a blizzard
of paperwork so deep that Belgium as a whole might become
a black hole due to the accumulation of such a large mass
in such a tiny area.

The WTO might well break down under the weight of claims and
counterclaims. If the US adopts the Precautionary Principle,
everyone else and his brother is sure to follow suit. And
everyone will file suits.

Hold on there... I was about to condemn all concerned for blaming
Australia without anything even close to what might be called
"proof", but I've suddenly realized that maybe this is not such
a bad thing after all.

So, we beekeepers take a hit, and the payoff is the complete
collapse of the WTO, maybe even NAFTA and CAFTA too.

Ya know, I think we can live with that sort of scenario.
So can our counterparts in Australia, even if they have to
play at being the "villain" for a few months.

The only rational conclusion one can draw is that bees 
claimed to be carrying a virus is "the last straw", after
all the other scary stuff that has been coming into the 
country - tainted toothpaste, toxic toys, poison pet food, 
and worst of all, threats of a new Celine Dion album in 
November.  There's just no way that anyone is suddenly
willing to buck the WTO over such a minor commodity as 
bees, so this can't just be about bees for the Senators.

We'd be doing everyone a favor.  After all, what's worse -
losing most of the decent jobs to countries with the lowest
wages and lowest standards for safety and environmental 
compliance, or basing your entire economy on making cheap
consumer goods that you hope to sell to the people who don't 
have decent jobs any more?  

...and everyone wonders why so many sub-prime mortgages got sold.
Its obvious - folks wanted jet-skis, iPod Nanos, and wide-screen TVs, 
so they leveraged their homes to buy all those cheaply-made consumer 
goods, and got sold sub-prime loans because they did not have decent 
jobs any more.

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