 Plant Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) Releases 2021 Annual Report As I write this message, the world continues to endure the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, PPQ employees have showed an impressive resilience since the pandemic's start that has not wavered. In fiscal year (FY) 2021, we continued to maintain and enhance our safeguarding continuum. This is our system of interlocking protections that prevents potentially devastating invasive plant pests and foreign animal diseases from entering and becoming established in our country. In addition, we facilitated safe trade by opening, expanding, and maintaining export markets for U.S. producers. We also collaborated with the international community to make global agricultural trade safe, fair, and predictable. Our safeguarding continuum begins abroad, where we fight against pests and diseases before they have a chance to come here. In FY 2021, PPQ inspected and cleared billions of pounds of U.S.-bound fresh fruits and vegetables from 21 countries before they shipped. We certified or recertified 171 treatment facilities worldwide to minimize the risk of plant pests entering the United States. We conducted 53 bilateral and technical meetings, opening new export markets and expanding current markets for the U.S. industry with a total estimated value of $129 million. We also positioned more than 50 U.S. experts on international and regional focus groups to advance key standard-setting and global initiatives on seeds, climate change, fruit flies, and forestry. The continuum runs through U.S. ports of entry, our last chance to keep pests and diseases out of our country. Last year, PPQ issued more than 35,000 import permits and regulatory guidance letters for plants and plant products and cleared 30,372 shipments containing over 2.17 billion plant units at our plant inspection stations. We identified 122,000 pests found during U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspections of cargo, mail, and express carrier shipments and took quick action to prevent those of concern from entering our country. In addition, we continued to implement risk-based sampling at U.S. ports of entry to focus inspections on higher risk shipments, reducing inspection times on the southern border by 77 percent. Finally, the continuum spans the entire country to detect pest incursions early and respond rapidly. In 2021, PPQ and our cooperators eradicated the giant African snail from southern Florida, protecting the State's multi-billion-dollar nursery industry and many of its valuable fruit and vegetable crops. We conducted 434 plant pest surveys with cooperators in 50 States and 5 Territories and coordinated the response to 47 species that were new or re-introduced into the United States. We also worked with State and industry partners to reduce boll weevil captures by 91 percent in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and we collaborated with Mexican government and industry partners to reduce boll weevil captures by 61 percent in Northern Tamaulipas. You can learn more about the many ways PPQ safeguarded plant health in FY 2021 by reading our modernized annual report. The updated report includes our "by the numbers" infographic with key plant protection statistics, a safeguarding continuum infographic that explains our three lines of defenses against invasive pests and diseases, and program reports organized by each line of defense. In addition, our Plant Protection Today monthly newsletter continually highlights our employees in action. Even as we reflect on last year's successes, we constantly look to the future and commit ourselves to innovating even more ways to help U.S. agriculture thrive—across the country and around the world. Dr. Mark L Davidson
Deputy Administrator
Plant Protection and Quarantine | 
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