File No. 811.612/72.
[Untitled]
Washington , February 7, 1913 .
To the Diplomatic Officers of the United States.
Gentlemen: With its circular instruction of December 21 last1 the Department enclosed to you a circular issued by the Department of Agriculture on December 20, 1912, containing the text of an act of Congress known as the “Plant Quarantine Act,” approved August 20, 1912, and the rules and regulations for carrying out the act.
In order that the appropriate officials of foreign countries may have the information which will enable them to comply with the requirements of the act with respect to inspection and certification, the Department of Agriculture has prepared specific directions, a print of which is enclosed herewith2 for transmission by you to the Governments to which you are respectively accredited.
To comply with section 1 of the act and the regulations quoted in relation thereto the Secretary of Agriculture states that “it is expected that there will be for each country a chief inspection official, who will be responsible, either directly or through his assistants, for the examination and certification of all nursery stock offered for export to the United States.” It may occasionally be desirable, he adds, “to have a number of such officers for the principal subdivisions of a country; but the appointment by local authorities of inspectors for towns or small districts of a county, such inspectors not being under the control of a central or chief official and not necessarily experts, will not be considered a compliance with these requirements. It is expected, in other words, that there shall be chief or State inspectors, as there now are in Holland, Belgium, and France, who will have control of the whole inspection service, through as many subordinates as the work may necessitate, and therefore this need should be presented directly to the Central Government of each country. Many of the reports so far received in relation to such foreign inspection indicate that consuls, to whom this matter has been referred, have made local inquiries, and this has led to provisions for inspection by towns or limited districts, and by local inspectors who cannot be looked upon as experts and who are not responsible to any central control, and therefore not at all meeting the requirements of the Plant Quarantine Act and Regulations.”
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