Arizona Department of Agriculture - Pest Exclusion and Management Program

This report addresses the Department’s Pest Exclusion and Management Program. Despite inherent limitations, Department inspections at Arizona’s ports-of-entry help avoid costly pest infestations. Even though it inspects only a fraction of the trucks entering Arizona, the Department appropriately focuses its efforts on the ports with the highest traffic and trucks that pose the highest risk. As a result, Department inspectors at the ports-of-entry have helped to prevent potentially costly pest and plant disease infestations from occurring in the State. However, the Department can take several steps to improve the program, including creating new positions to conduct port inspections and working with the Department of Transportation to enhance its port inspection activities.

Additionally, the Department currently recovers only part of its costs for issuing phyto-sanitary certificates, which Arizona agricultural producers sometimes need to export their products to other states or countries. For interstate certificates, the Department lacks statutory authority to assess a fee for issuing these certificates, except under limited circumstances. For international (federal) certificates, the Department has authority from the federal government to charge fees that reflect its costs for issuing these certificates, but it  employs an outdated fee schedule that does not always recover the full costs. Therefore, the Department needs to continue with its efforts to identify its total costs to issue certificates and establish appropriate fees, while the Legislature should consider granting the Department authority to establish fees for issuing interstate certificates. 

Finally, the Department is especially focused on detecting and preventing the Red Imported Fire Ant (RIFA) from becoming established in Arizona. RIFA, which is firmly entrenched in several Southern states, causes severe damage to agriculture, wildlife, people, and property. The Department was actively involved in treating ten locations for RIFA during fiscal year 2000, including a Phoenix motel and nearby restaurant; nurseries in Phoenix, Gilbert, and Mesa; and Cibola High School in Yuma.