The solution isn't to cut off trade or hire more inspectors to test each strawberry. The solution is to choose produce carefully and wash it, anyway.
I do understand your concern about bringing in non-native species to a new area. That's a huge problem. Those of us in the south know all about fire ants and kudzu, neither of which were here a hundred years ago.
I don't think it can really be stopped without ripping up our roads, or closing our harbors and airports. This is going to be a matter of how to deal with the problem rather than how to prevent it. It's a given that it's going to happen. What we need is a rapid reaction taskforce to respond to it.
Supply disruptions, whether they are gamed or are the result some catastrophe, always play out the same way. New suppliers enter the market to capture the high prices. Supply increases, prices fall, everyone gets over it and moves on.
The purpose of CAFTA is to increase the supply of goods available to everyone. That's a good thing.
When retailers withold information in order to equate the two products, when suppliers can't get country of origin labeling because there are but two or three distributors who collude to keep it so, a consumer hasn't that option.
Frankly, I think the way to beat the system is direct purchase from the supplier; i.e., buying your groceries from the farmer, even overseas, by the Internet. With global shipping as efficient as it is, a secure supply chain that cuts out the middleman and/or the need to drive to a store could well benefit both as long as that shipment was via a fully integrated supply chain.
Consider coffee. The growers are getting record lows for their crops, about $0.90 per pound. Given that four companies control virtually all distribution into the US, the price to the market approaches $4.00. A LOT of that is profit by collusion. If I could buy the beans from the farmer over the Internet, he could ship it by Fedex or some other custom shipper and we might both benefit. As I have written many times, the key to web-based distribution and the reduction of many of our transportation headaches lies in firing the US Post Office.
Sorry to be so cryptic about that, if you want an article on the topic, I'll email you a draft.
I don't think it can really be stopped without ripping up our roads, or closing our harbors and airports.
The reason has nothing to do with infrastructure and everything to do with powerful political interests. There is a way to manage and apportion that risk, as I have proposed in the book.
This is going to be a matter of how to deal with the problem rather than how to prevent it.
In some cases prevention is cheaper. It varies. Information networks go a long way toward reducing the cost of the risk. As I said, see Part IV, Chapter 2, because it has some workable proposals.
It's a given that it's going to happen. What we need is a rapid reaction taskforce to respond to it.
I'm sorry to say I disagree. We'll get the "weed police" who will harass the victims of the policy, themselves competitors of the perpetrators.
Supply disruptions, whether they are gamed or are the result some catastrophe, always play out the same way. New suppliers enter the market to capture the high prices. Supply increases, prices fall, everyone gets over it and moves on.
It's the multigenerational investment we have in domestic producers as collateral damage to which I object. When they go, they sell for a song, often to the same interests who supported said destructive policy. T'was ever thus:
Amos 8:5 Saying, When will the new moon be gone, that we may sell corn? and the sabbath, that we may set forth wheat, making the ephah small, and the shekel great, and falsifying the balances by deceit?