Believe it or not .. 50-thousand pounds of cargo comes into Maui through Kahului Airport every day.
"It is quite a bit," said Kyle.
And it ends up in this building at the airport where state agriculture inspectors shake and scrutinize the produce.
Kyle Yagi is the Maui inspection supervisor.
"Sometimes we’ll find frogs in the boxes but mostly it’s insects and diseases, all prohibited," said Kyle.
It’s not as difficult as looking for a needle in a haystack .. But it can be laborious.
"Takes us a few hours to complete," said Kyle.
All these boxes being checked in this "high risk" room contain organic produce destined for Mana Foods in Paia.
Because no pesticides are used, there’s a greater chance of finding stowaways.
"If there’s a bug it’s usually on the green leafy stuff. Or on the stuff like artichokes where the bugs can hide inside. Things like potatoes, apples, don’t normally have it," said James Basco of Mana Foods.
We’ll check back in here a little later to see what ag inspectors find.
But in the meantime, Kyle takes us to the destroyer room where there are bags of flowers.
"They have diseases on the leaves which if it came here to hawaii it could possibly damage our crops here," said Kyle.
"You see how these are symptoms of it. You see the darkening of the, the brown spots? Yeah." said Kyle.
"So what will happen to them? We’ll put them into the steam sterilizer and it’s considered treated after that and we’ll just dump em after that," said Kyle.
If the produce contains at least a 10-percent infestation of bugs.
They get thrown into this freezer, where the insects are frozen to death.
Kyle says they confiscate things almost daily because of insects or disease.
"It’s actually kind of rare where we won’t find something," said Kyle.
Maui’s inspection facility is the only one of its kind it the state.
It opened in 2008, thanks to federal and state dollars, as part of the airport’s runway expansion plans.
The Ag Department wants to build something similar in Honolulu, but doesn’t have the money yet.
Now back in the "high risk" room … It appears not everything is going to be heading to Mana Foods.
Inspectors found a lot of insects on the organic red leaf lettuce from California.
"Like you see right now 5 boxes of lettuce being taken away," said James. "Monday we also had the same lettuce same grower same, see unfortunately it would be good if these guys on the mainland would be taking care of this and making sure they not sending this to us."
Inspectors also found some stowaways on the organic strawberries.
About 70-80-percent of the organic strawberries usually get confiscated.
"So right now we’re going to bag up these boxes so the insects don’t get out right away then we’re going to take it to the freezer and put it in there after," said Kyle.
Kyle says sometimes importers get upset when ag inspectors confiscate items.
But the money lost is peanuts compared to what it could cost the state in the long run.
See the original article at: KHON2 Local News
