40 MARCH 2024 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL 2014 Keeping India’s Khapra Beetles and Other Pests Out of U.S. Food Supplies As agricultural minister-counselor in New Delhi, Foreign Agricultural Service FSO Allan Mustard oversaw USDA programs to keep invasive pests such as khapra beetles, a serious threat to American grain supplies, out of India’s agricultural shipments to the United States. Mustard went on to become U.S. ambassador to Turkmenistan. The big issues were basmati exports to the United States and exports of mangoes, because India is the home of the khapra beetle, which is the absolute worst quarantine pest you can imagine. We required that all basmati rice shipped to the United States come from a limited number of facilities that met APHIS [Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service] standards for insect control, and this included use of stainless steel silos for storing the rice in bulk. They would not use burlap bags; they would only use polypropylene bags for shipping the rice, because burlap is a natural habitat for the khapra beetle. They eat it, then they breed, so you know, you had to take all these measures to make sure that there would be no khapra beetles. Then of course there were very stringent inspection requirements. So any basmati rice shipped to the United States from India could only come under these rather stringent conditions, which cost money, and that was the complaint. Burlap is cheaper in India than polypropylene, why do we have to do this? This is unfair. It’s a trade barrier. … No trade barrier, we’re not barring your trade. We want your rice. We just don’t want the khapra beetles to come with it. Similar thing with the mangoes; everything had to go through a radiation facility to sterilize any insect pests [such as fruit flies] that were in the mangoes, and that way when the mangoes arrived in the United States, if live insects came out, they would be sterilized, they wouldn’t be able to reproduce. Again, it was expensive to ship all your mangoes to this one place, have them irradiated, pay for the irradiation, and then take them to the airport, put them on a plane, and fly them to the United States. We also required special boxes that had to be sealed so that insects couldn’t get in after they were irradiated. So for every box of mangoes that went, there was a certain cost associated with meeting our standards, and they resented that. I just had to tell them, look, it’s this or nothing, either do this or your mangoes don’t go to the United States. … Indians constantly complained about this because it meant that all the mangoes that were shipped to the United States had to come to one facility, go through the irradiation, that could only be done while the APHIS inspector was present to make sure there was no monkey business. They had to pay for it, they had to pay for his room and board, they had to pay for all of his expenses, they of course had to pay for the transportation to the facility, the operation of the facility, and then they would ship these mangoes by air because mangoes have a very short shelf life. You have a Prem Balkaran, an inspector with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, examines mangoes being packaged for shipment to the United States. Inset: An irradiation seal (pictured here) certifies that irradiation has sterilized any insects that might have infested the mangoes inside this box, making the fruit safe for export to the United States. COURTESY OF ALLAN MUSTARD There was a certain cost associated with meeting our standards, and they resented that. I just had to tell them, look, it’s this or nothing, either do this or your mangoes don’t go to the United States. —Allan Mustard
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