U.S. Senator Charles Schumer is complaining about a plan by Washington, D.C. to bail out Polish apple growers. The issue is that the apples would come into the United States without inspection.
Polish apple growers used to send most of their crop to Russia, where the quality of the crop was not questioned. Then, in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine and the Western European reaction, there was an embargo placed on Polish apples going east.
Since then, many of the apples have found new export homes. Schumer says the U.S. State Department is pushing the U.S. Department of Agriculture to not inspect imported polish apples. Schumer says the inspections are key.
"They want to import apples without inspection because Russia, they stood up to Russia, they stood up to Putin with Ukraine. Russia's not buying their apples. So, they have an emergency," Schumer says. "They want to bring their apples here. That's fine, but they've gotta be inspected, because you bring in two or three of these pests and they spread over several years and ruin our apple crop."
Appleton fruit farmer Jim Bittner says apple growers have plenty of imported pests right now and do not want any more to make dealing with pests even more complicated. The farmers are already dealing with the results of this year's drought and last winter that has cut into much of this year's fruit crops.
