China mystery seed scare a reminder of our long history with invasive species

Wherever we humans have wandered, we have carried our invasive species with us, deliberately or accidentally, despite the vigilance of customs officers
The episode provides further proof to the Trump administration of the perils of globalisation and why China should be seen as an existential threat to the world

David Dodwell

Published: 6:45am, 12 Sep 2020

Why you can trust SCMP

The Trumpian narrative that China will stop at nothing to unleash mischief and disruption across the United States took a new and novel twist recently with reports that thousands of packets of seeds were dropping through letterboxes across the country. Yes, seeds.

By the end of August, the US Department of Agriculture reported that almost 9,000 packets of seeds had been delivered across all 50 states, most originating from China. Amazon has suspended delivery of any seed packages that do not originate from within the US and have not been sent by US nationals.

To be fair, not all the unsolicited packets contained seeds. Some contained ping pong balls or face masks, and some were empty. And not all turned up in the US. According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, up to August 6, around 750 packs had dropped uninvited through Canadian letterboxes. Scotland’s National Farmers Union reported that “significant numbers” of Scottish households had received packs of seeds.

Concerned about the possibility of contaminated or invasive species, authorities have instructed recipients not to open the packs or plant or compost the seeds. Those who ignored those instructions have been disappointed. Most are mint, lavender, tomato, strawberry, rose or citrus seeds. Most disappointing are the packets with weed seeds such as shepherd’s purse, a kind of wild mustard, or flixweed, which is infamous for giving awful bellyaches to grazing cattle.

These may have been accidental. A 2013 study by a team from the University of Massachusetts reported that an average kilogram of crop seeds sent to Alaska contained six additional seed species and a total of 4,000 contaminating seeds. Meanwhile, a 50-kilogram shipment of spring wheat seeds from Canada to Japan was found to contain 40 different weed species.

03:07

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For a brief period, it seemed China was at the heart of some Machiavellian plot to compromise the US farm sector. For those laundering QAnon conspiracy theories in the US, this could sit alongside the alleged Chinese plot to send Covid-19 to the US, the TikTok plot to steal the identities of US citizens or even the Grindr plot to discover and blackmail gay men in the US military or intelligence services.

Sadly, the theory quickly floundered. It seems the global blizzard of seeds was part of a “brushing” scam intended to boost internet ratings of Chinese e-commerce companies by falsely puffing up sales and having the ghost buyers of these packets pen glowing online reviews of their merchandise. The US Better Business Bureau did warn recipients – not that the seeds were dangerous but that their online identities may have been compromised.

In reality, there is probably good cause to worry about the dangers of another e-commerce ruse to amplify sales numbers and persuade advertisers to throw more money at the growing community of “influencers”, whether in China or elsewhere. The global problem of pesky invasive species disrupting ecosystems cannot be underestimated.

As a study by Sarah Hayden Reichard and Peter White noted, “invasive plants, animals and fungi are second only to habitat loss and degradation in endangering native plant species”. They reported that the estimated annual cost of damage done by invasive plants was more than US$35 billion.

How a dream tree from China became a nightmare on US soil

Reichard and White also note that up to 65 per cent of Australia’s naturalised flora were intentionally introduced for horticulture, and that most plants used in agriculture, forestry and horticulture in North America were not native. Even former US president Thomas Jefferson, an avid gardener, was widely blamed for introducing Scotch broom, which has become an unwelcome invasive species across North America in the past 200 years.

Their study reminds us that the propagation of invasive species has a dishonourable role across thousands of years despite the humourless vigilance of customs officers and their sniffer dogs to spot an orange accidentally left in hand luggage or discover whether we have mud on our shoes after tramping through a farm in the past month.

It seems medicinal and culinary plants have been plundered and replanted since at least 8000BC, with aristocrats in Egypt, Greece and Rome filling their gardens with exotics from across their empires.

Spanish explorers in South America brought home potatoes, tomatoes and numerous other invasive culinary delights, and eccentric British colonials tramped the mountains of southwest China, plundering thousands of pretty new plants and trees to populate our botanical gardens. Think also of the wars fought across Southeast Asia for access to the Spice Islands.

According to the International Seed Federation (ISF), the global seed trade was worth about US$12 billion in 2017. Antonio Villarroel, chair of the ISF Illegal Seed Practices Working Group and head of the Spanish Association of Plant Breeders, says “there are quite a lot of infringements in seed that vary from crop to crop” as “up to 40 per cent of seed can come from illegal sources” and “up to 50 to 60 per cent of certain crops are illegal”.

Somehow, I don’t think Villarroel had e-commerce brushing scammers in mind when he said that, but perhaps the lesson is the same. Wherever we humans have wandered during the past centuries, we have carried our invasive species with us, whether seeds or viruses, deliberately or accidentally.

More often than not, the harm arises as an unintended consequence. China’s e-commerce scammers may have little interest in the seeds they are distributing unsolicited across the United States, but they provide yet further proof to the Trump administration of the insidious encroachment of globalisation and of why China needs to be regarded as an existential threat to the world.

David Dodwell researches and writes about global, regional and Hong Kong challenges from a Hong Kong point of view

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