Kam Quarles, CEO of National Potato Council, Washington, DC

As a working industry group gathered in Ottawa for face-to-face meetings on potato wart, the CEO of the Washington-based National Potato Council published an opinion editorial in The Packer on December 2.  Its headline:  Simple questions about devastating disease require transparent answers.

Those questions are based on the trends of soil sampling in Prince Edward Island that have fallen precipitously in recent years. The day before, officials of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency shared data that showed an average of 9,600 soil tests in 2017 but only 1,600 soil tests in 2021. 

“There is no clear answer as to why,” Kam Quarles, CEO, National Potato Council, told The Grower. “With the discovery of potato wart in a seed field last year, the direction should be ramped-up testing and an expansion of survey work elsewhere. The absolutely worst place to find this disease is in seed.” 

In his opinion editorial, Quarles wrote that comprehensive soil sampling tests need to be reinstated as quickly as possible at a vastly larger scale than five years ago. That recommendation, in early December, is not encouraging for a quick reopening of the PEI border to exports.

“Nature is not being helpful,” says Quarles. “We are now fighting the calendar.”

For its part, the Canadian potato industry is pushing for an exemption that would allow ships to carry PEI potatoes from the Halifax harbour directly to San Juan, Puerto Rico – a  territory of the U.S. Historically, about 25 per cent of all PEI exports take this route. 

Quarles says that the USDA/APHIS would have to rule on the safety of that issue, making a case that there is no risk to mainland American potato growers.   

Turning to the present moment, Quarles says he sympathizes with PEI growers, underscoring that the U.S. needs the seed, fresh and processing potatoes for its own industry. He is critical of those who would politicize the issue with verbiage about a trade war.

Quarles said, “The lack of visibility of this disease is part of the worry. I’ll leave it to the technical experts to determine what the soil sampling regime should be.” 

But he did emphasize that the American potato industry is familiar with phytosanitary protocols, especially as they relate to potato cyst nematode in Idaho. “The orders of magnitude of testing are five to 10 times higher. Consistency of testing should uncover disease where you least expect it.” 

Potato wart was last detected in the U.S. – Pennsylvania to be specific – in the 1970s. Because it is considered to be an eradicated disease, no potato wart surveillance is conducted there. That’s why Quarles has never seen potato wart himself.

To read the opinion editorial published in The Packer on December 2, 2021, link here: https://bit.ly/3ryGaQT

Source: Interview with Kam Quarles, National Potato Council, December 3, 2021