> My understanding is that the package bees that were > illegally imported into Portugal complete with SHB > came from the USA and were accompanied by an official > certificate... By definition, anything "illegally imported" would have bogus paperwork that might look "official", but could not include any legitimate and true "official certificates". It could be that the paperwork was intended to merely meet the requirements for shipment between US states, paperwork that described bees other than the specific bees shipped, or forged paperwork. Depending upon the state in the US to which one is shipping or transporting bees, the inspections and paperwork can be just as rigorous as those required to "export" bees, as in the US, each state calls bees from every other state "imported". (It should be made clear that the "United States" are much less "united" than the EU on such issues. In many regards, the states are more "untied" than "united".) > Can anybody explain please how such certificates > are issued and what checks are made to ensure that > they are accurate? The short (but mostly useless) answer for international shipments is that specific requirements are negotiated between the two countries, based upon the WTO SPS guidelines and the OIE bio-sanitary rules, with each negotiation perhaps resulting in a slightly different set of requirements depending upon the specific "science based" concerns of the destination country in their "risk analysis". The shorter, plain English version is "You never get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate". But does anyone know more specifics than are revealed in the press release on the web? What I have read raises multiple questions. http://www.bbka.org.uk/news/news/small-hive-beetle-found-i.shtml "The SHB has this month been intercepted in an unauthorised consignment of queen bees imported into Portugal from Texas...." Sadly, the "unauthorised consignment" got past Portuguese customs inspection staff and into multiple apiaries before the fraud was discovered, and before the SHB were detected: "Veterinary Authorities took rapid action to isolate the apiaries, destroy all colonies and associated beekeeping equipment and treat the soil." Keith Tignor (VA State Apiarist) would have set up a "bait" colony on the site with an SHB trap to attract, detect, and kill off any surviving SHB that might later emerge from the soil, rather than prompt them to travel further afield, but Keith is a Jedi-Master Beekeeper, which is rare for a PhD entomologist. Can someone who speaks Portuguese suggest this tactic to the Portuguese authorities? Note that "certification" is demonstrated yet again to be a poor replacement for port-of-entry inspection. Inspection would have found the SHB on the bees regardless of the integrity and/or competence of the shipper and receiver. (To review, one needs a system design that is independent of "trust", rather than completely dependent upon it. One also needs a system that expects and handles human error, rather than assuming human perfection as a given.) Given the quote above, I'm not sure what is meant by the use of the term "intercepted". Where I come from, "intercepted" would be used if the consignment was stopped at the port of entry, before reaching the beekeeper. A more accurate term would be "fumble" in the US, and "own goal" everywhere else. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the UK has the ONLY adequate program for detecting and preventing such incidents. They remove all attendants, replace them with locally-bred workers, and send the (killed) attendants to a lab for analysis. Anything less is... uh, less. If the "unauthorized consignment" was the act of a legitimate queen producer, rather than a smuggler, someone screwed up badly, which is not terribly surprising consider the complexity of the WTO regulations and the EU's own regulations, which conflict with, and in some cases violate, the WTO treaties. (This is not unique to the EU, all WTO members are openly gaming the system in one way or another, or at least interpreting agreements in very self-serving ways.) If detected at port of entry, then there would be no doubt that the SHB came from that queen shipment. (Canada had a very similar problem a while ago with bees from the other side of the planet. Accusations were tossed back and forth, strict proof was demanded, the evidence was less than compelling in the view of the exporter, and no one learned anything as a result, nor did anyone change their systems to expect and account for future human error or disagreement.) As an aside, the WTO has published 900+ pages of regulations to date. How can this possibly be called "free trade"? It certainly isn't fair trade, is it? jim (Single-handedly consuming a large fraction of the last of the world's dwindling irony reserves) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::