U.S. Customs and Border Protection agricultural specialist Megan Walsh looks for cast skins of the Khapra beetle on a shipment of wheat from the United Arab Emirates that arrived to a U.S. Customs Centralized Examination Station in Itasca, Friday, August 26, 2011. (Alex Garcia/ Chicago Tribune)
At a secure warehouse in a suburban industrial park last Friday, three specialists from U.S. Customs and Border Protection tore into tons of boxed and bagged goods from overseas in search of one of the world's most dangerous aliens.
Evidence of the intruder had turned up earlier in the month in the luggage of travelers from India at O'Hare International Airport. In a bag of rice, inspectors found the skin and larva of a khapra beetle, a dirty little beast with the morals of a cockroach and an appetite that if left unchecked could consume the contents of an entire grain elevator in short order.
"If the beetle ever established itself in this country, it would ruin our agricultural export industry, one of the last profitable export industries we have been left with in the U.S." said Mark Grzeszkowiak, chief agricultural specialist from the customs agency's Chicago office.
28/08/11 William Mullen/Chicago Tribune
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
0 comments:
Post a Comment