Summary
U.S. agriculture generates over $1 trillion in annual economic activity, but concerns exist about the sector's vulnerability to a natural or deliberate introduction of foreign livestock, poultry, and crop pests and disease. Under the Agricultural Quarantine Inspection (AQI) program, international passengers and cargo are inspected at U.S. ports of entry to seize prohibited material and intercept foreign agricultural pests. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 transferred AQI inspections from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and left certain other AQI responsibilities at USDA. GAO examined (1) the extent to which USDA and DHS have changed the inspection program since the transfer, (2) how the agencies have managed and coordinated their responsibilities, and (3) how funding for agricultural inspections has been managed since the transfer.
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, federal agencies' roles and responsibilities were modified to help protect agriculture. In March 2003, more than 1,800 agriculture specialists within USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) became DHS Customs and Border Protection (CBP) employees, while USDA retained responsibility for AQI activities such as setting inspection policy, providing training, and collecting user fees. Since the transfer, the agencies have expanded training on agriculture issues for CBP officers and agriculture specialists. CBP and APHIS also have taken steps to enable agriculture specialists to better target shipments and passengers for inspections and established a process to assess how CBP agriculture specialists are implementing AQI policy. Finally, CBP created a new agriculture liaison position in each of its district field offices to advise regional directors on agricultural issues. While these are positive steps, the agencies face management and coordination problems that increase the vulnerability of U.S. agriculture to foreign pests and disease. CBP has not developed sufficient performance measures that take into account the agency's expanded mission or consider all pathways by which prohibited agricultural items or foreign pests may enter the country. Specifically, although CBP's measures focus on two pathways that pose a risk to U.S. agriculture, they do not consider other key pathways such as commercial aircraft, vessels, and truck cargo. Also, although CBP has hired more than 630 specialists since the transfer, it has not yet developed or used a risk-based staffing model to ensure that adequate numbers of agriculture specialists are staffed to areas of greatest vulnerability. CBP also has not used available inspection and interception data to evaluate the performance of the AQI program. CBP and APHIS also continue to experience difficulty in sharing information such as key policy changes and urgent inspection alerts, and CBP has allowed the number and proficiency of agriculture canine units to decline. Although APHIS is legally authorized (though not required) to charge AQI user fees to cover program costs, we found that the agencies have not taken the necessary steps to ensure that user fees cover AQI costs. Consequently, the agencies had to use other authorized funding sources to pay for the program. Also, because of weaknesses in the design of CBP's new financial management system, CBP was unable to provide APHIS with information on the actual costs of the AQI program by user-fee type--for example, fees paid by international air passengers. APHIS uses this information to set future user-fee rates. Finally, in fiscal years 2004 and 2005, APHIS did not transfer AQI funds to CBP as agreed to by both agencies, causing some ports of entry to reduce spending on inspection activities in fiscal year 2005.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
Daniel Bertoni
Government Accountability Office: Natural Resources and Environment
(202) 512-5988
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To ensure the effectiveness of CBP and APHIS agricultural quarantine inspection programs designed to protect U.S. agriculture from accidental or deliberate introduction of foreign pests and disease, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Agriculture should work together to adopt meaningful performance measures for assessing the AQI program's effectiveness at intercepting foreign pests and disease on agricultural materials entering the country by all pathways--including commercial aircraft, vessels, and truck cargo--and posing a risk to U.S. agriculture.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To ensure the effectiveness of CBP and APHIS agricultural quarantine inspection programs designed to protect U.S. agriculture from accidental or deliberate introduction of foreign pests and disease, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Agriculture should work together to establish a process to identify and assess the major risks posed by foreign pests and disease and develop and implement a national staffing model to ensure that agriculture staffing levels at each port are sufficient to meet those risks.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To ensure the effectiveness of CBP and APHIS agricultural quarantine inspection programs designed to protect U.S. agriculture from accidental or deliberate introduction of foreign pests and disease, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Agriculture should work together to ensure that urgent agriculture alerts and other information essential to safeguarding U.S. agriculture are more effectively shared between the departments and transmitted to DHS agriculture specialists in the ports.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To ensure the effectiveness of CBP and APHIS agricultural quarantine inspection programs designed to protect U.S. agriculture from accidental or deliberate introduction of foreign pests and disease, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Agriculture should work together to improve the effectiveness of the agriculture canine program by reviewing policies and procedures regarding training and staffing of agriculture canines and ensure that these policies and procedures are followed in the ports.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To ensure the effectiveness of CBP and APHIS agricultural quarantine inspection programs designed to protect U.S. agriculture from accidental or deliberate introduction of foreign pests and disease, the Secretaries of Homeland Security and Agriculture should work together to revise the user fees to ensure that they cover the AQI program's costs.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: The Secretary of Homeland Security should undertake a full review of its financial management systems, policies, and procedures for the AQI program to ensure financial accountability for funds allocated for agricultural quarantine inspections.
Agency Affected: Department of Homeland Security
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: The Secretary of Agriculture should take steps to assess and remove barriers to the timely and accurate transfer of AQI user fees to DHS.
Agency Affected: Department of Agriculture
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
