Officials who oversee the inspection of goods coming to Hawaiʻi say they can’t do it properly because of a staffing shortage.
State plant inspectors went through more than 19 million parcels that came into Hawaiʻi last year, but there were only about 90 inspectors who did that work.
The Hawaiʻi Department of Agriculture’s Plant Quarantine Branch works to inspect food coming into the state.
However, branch manager Carol Okada said inspectors have too many other parcels to check.
“What we normally are supposed to do, our primary (goal) is to look at the agricultural products coming in because these are things that are bringing in insects and diseases,” she said at a recent informational briefing at the state Capitol.
“Although we're doing it, we're not doing it to the level we were once doing it,” she added.
The branch has not yet recovered after losing inspectors during the 2008 recession when the agricultural department said it had over 100 inspectors. Around that time it was inspecting about half the amount of packages it inspected last year.
Okada said that cargo moved by air is one of their biggest priorities because it’s the source of a lot of plant material and animals that get into the state, but a lot of that material isn’t checked because of the inspector shortage.
Okada told lawmakers that a sample of lettuce that was imported contained 36 insect species, including 19 that were not already established in Hawaiʻi.
The agricultural department’s priority this year is to bolster the amount of inspectors on staff.
