Personally I could care less about whether NZ queens are allowed
into the US or not, and it should have been very obvious to you
(and other readers) that my comments were directed towards your
insinuations about NZ's honey bee disease status, not whether NZ
queens should be allowed into your country.
 
As for your remarks about me "justifying my job" and our
organisation not being able to survive without taxpayer support,
I would suggest very strongly that you investigate the facts
before popping off on an international bulletin board about
something you obviously don't know very much about.  I thought
BEE-L was for the sharing of factual information, not for the
expression of uninformed and erroneous opinion.
 
Oh, and by the way, in case you think this fight is between
yourself and a Kiwi, you're wrong.  I was born and raised in
North America, and only came to NZ after working with bees for a
number of years in British Columbia.  I'm quite aware of both the
climate of regulation and government support for beekeeping in
the US, and the overall state of the industry in both the US and
Canada.  You may have had a "raw deal" from disease control
regulation in the US in the past decade, but that doesn't
necessarily mean that it's the same everywhere in the beekeeping
world.