> Canada should not trust its biosecurity to US, New Zealand, > Austrailian, or any other county's producers. (etc.) Canada should not consider trade across the US border to be a biosecurity matter any more than interstate trade in the US or interprovincial trade in Canada should be a biosecurity matter. As for bees, honey bees are not native to Canada and are only maintained here by man, with considerable effort, and beside, most of the stock here came from US sources. There are few natural barriers at the Canada/US border, and, if there are separate regions that should be kept separate, it is Eastern and Western Canada, not Canada and the USA. The current canadian border closure to US mainland stock was (supposed to be) simply a temporary quarantine to slow the spread of a new and poorly understood pest. The ban was similar to those imposed early on by some US states for a short while. Those local bans, in the US, lasted only until it was seen that the direct and indirect costs of the quarantine were more disruptive and costly than the pests being controlled. Unfortunately, national politics being what they are in Canada, undoing our border closure was not as simple as imposing it, and reason has had very little part in the discusion until lately. At supper tonight I sat with two Europeans and they talked of how a Dutchman took his hives to Spain with him and back when he went for holidays, and how the Western Europeans routinely went to Turkey, Egypt and other countries to get bees. They seem to have thought continentally long before the current union. > The rules concerning "Africanized Bees" (AHB) are transparent > political posturing, and therefore silly. So was much of the rest of it, if mean spiritedness, self-dealing, and protectionism can be called "silly". allen http://www.honeybeeworld.com :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::