Unsolicited bean seeds from China: DO NOT PLANT

[The Blue Flower]

State departments of Agriculture all over the country are reporting that people have received unordered packets of bean seeds from China. I received some myself and out of curiosity planted a few a couple of days ago. My daughter sent me the DoA warning from Washington State (I live in Virginia) last night, so today I dug them up. In two days they had already swelled and put out roots. The US DoA has asked that these be reported, but warned not to plant them. They could be very invasive, contain disease, who knows.

[Budi]

1. Check the pkg for Ivanka's patent #.

Sounds like something the Trump fam would unleash on America.

grrrrr....😬🤬

[rusty fender]

2. Did the packet identify which plant

was contained inside, e.g., flower, vegetable, herb, etc.? I’m curios about how the senders are labeling these packets

[bigtree]

5. jewelry

...

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article244479272.html

[bigtree]

3. so it's not known if this is some danger

...or just a scam.

I'd think they could identify whether these are dangerous fairly quickly. Really doubt the 'invasive' part, but would still isolate them to some extent from similar crops .

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-seed-mailings/

[PTWB]

7. How would it be a scam?

Asking for money down the road?

[bigtree]

9. Snopes reasons they're trying to establish a fake customer base

...for some purpose which I'm loath to repeat.

[blogslut]

22. This makes sense - from the Snopes article:

[T]here have been some cases of criminals buying their own products and shipping it to a real address. The con artist then writes a fake review, purportedly from the buyer the product was shipped to. Why does the thief go to the trouble? To make it look like a “verified” review, since the review came from a “buyer” who bought the product.

“Amazon is continuously developing algorithms to automatically detect these merchants, but it also relies on consumer awareness,” [Kevin Lancaster, CEO of ID Agent] says. And what really can throw people off is that sometimes these con artists build up a couple months of legitimate sales, making a con artist’s products appear reputable, Lancaster says. “People buy from the fake listings, and instead of receiving a product in a few weeks, the scammer has already made off with the money,” he explains.

I've seen numerous items from suspicious sellers on Amazon with lots of no-comment 5-star reviews.

[dweller]

4. are they labeled other than 'bean' ?

like latin name, or some description?

✌🏼

[The Blue Flower]

8. The packets are in Chinese

There's a photo of a plant on the front. The back is instructions in Chinese.

[tritsofme]

31. If you're so interested, you could probably take a picture

And use the Google Translate app to get some idea

[panader0]

6. They grow pod people--look out!

Seriously, why would China do that? Why did the DoA issue a warning? Strange.

[The Blue Flower]

10. Received the following message on my Next Door app

Thanks for sharing. A friend from Ohio sent me the warning this morning. They are super invasive and kill surrounding healthy trees, shrubs etc.

[Hortensis]

11. Bizarre. Just another way to spread paranoia in advance of Nov 3?

It sounds like a little thing, but it's in the news, including political news, suggesting suspicion of political motive, as does report of similar incidents in Great Britain.

Speaking of toxic influences, am I imagining that I'm seeing more seemingly fearful, defeatist and downright wacky posts on DU? I've opened threads that didn't have even one rational response, just emotional wailing and flailing.

[BComplex]

14. Welcome to the united states of russia & china.

Trump asked for it...he's getting it.

[roamer65]

12. This is what grows from them.

[spinbaby]

13. I saw a picture of these posted elsewhere

They looked like orange pips sealed in a cellophane packet. Weird.

[dweller]

15. probably

more kudzu...
😐

✌🏼

[2naSalit]

16. +1

[louis-t]

17. NOOOOOOO!

[csziggy]

19. Kudzu seeds look like beans

So the pictured seeds don't match.

Kudzu seeds:

https://www.inspection.gc.ca/plant-health/seeds/seed-testing-and-grading/seeds-identification/pueraria-montana/eng/1397755917428/1397755957679

Mystery Chinese seeds:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/china-seed-mailings/

If you search for "mystery Chinese seeds" in Google and look at just images, there are many other types - not just the ones pictured on the Snopes page.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mystery+chinese+seeds

Some are a mix:

https://www.wbrz.com/news/louisiana-resident-receives-mystery-seeds-in-mail-from-china-authorities-urge-caution/

[Buns_of_Fire]

23. Several years ago, when browsing in the local florist's...

I ran across a pack of seeds that read something like "Jack and the Beanstalk" beans.

Hmmm?

So I bought a pack. I love greenery and the like.

Planted 'em outside the apartment. Damn. They really DO grow fast!

Shortly after, my wife and I moved to a house that, believe it or not, used to BE a plant nursery! (Maybe I'll recount my stories of 5lb. palmetto bugs later.)

Anyway, to my former neighbors in the vicinity of N. Andrews Ave. and Oakland Park Blvd. in Ft. Lauderdale: I'm sorry. It was my fault.

[Poiuyt]

18. It could be an important new food source. Or...

[hunter]

20. Nobody has identified the seeds yet? That's odd.

But that would make them less scary, and the story less interesting.

Trump has probably ordered the DOA not to identify the seeds.

CHINESE SEEDS! OH NO! THEY ARE COMING TO KILL YOU!

[KY_EnviroGuy]

21. Secret agent seeds that grow biocameras and microphones....

with bioelectrical WIFI transmitters sending spy data to Beijing. Some please post that conspiracy theory to a RW blog.

Seriously, there's no doubt there's nefarious purpose behind these mailings. I wonder if any recipients receive follow-up letters of solicitation in the mail. Also curious if recipients have bought mail order Chinese products directly or through Amazon before.

By my quick reading of USDA's strict general rules on seed imports, these packages would be illegal shipments. A search of USDA's web site did not reveal any alerts or bulletins relating to this issue.

Hope the USDA does a genetic analysis soon and reveals exactly what these plants are.....

[Rstrstx]

30. You are correct

Small lots of seeds are supposed to be accompanied by a copy of the recipient's USDA import permit and first go to one of about a dozen approved sites in the country that's capable of inspecting seed. The seed supplier is supposed to put a green and yellow sticker on the package that the receiver sends them. This rarely happens though, and small lots of seeds usually flow freely into the country undetected. Don't discount the possibility that some Chinese company just screwed up and got their mailing list wrong.

[TheBlackAdder]

24. Sounds like how BigAG sent free seeds to South America that would not regerminate.

.

Farmers making $2.50 a day were saving a portion of their heirloom crops for the next planting cycle. A lot were happy to receive these free seeds for two years because it meant that they didn't have to buy supplemental seeds to bolster their own crops. After two years, their legacy seeds became sterile and they could not use them anymore and found that they were then locked into buying seeds after that. A majority of family farms were lost to the likes of Cargill, DuPont Pioneer, Monsanto & ADM.

.

[Iggo]

25. You didn't order them. You can't read the label. But you planted them?

People do this?

[madinmaryland]

26. The new kudzu? It's going places!

[Rstrstx]

27. Technically you're supposed to have a plant import permit to receive foreign seeds

With the Latin name of the plant attached on the package. Who is doing this and why doesn't make sense, they should know the government is supposed to confiscate them. In any event it should be the USDA handling this, state ag agencies aren't in charge of foreign imports.

In reality people order seeds from other countries more frequently than you'd think, usually without the proper papers. It may be a seed company over there got the addresses wrong, I just don't know - it's one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard.

There's probably an explanation for it that does't rise to the level of state-level malfeasance. If I had to guess I'd say someone in the US or abroad figured out an easy way of trolling Americans by ordering seed for them knowing full well it would make the news. That or a company over there that has many businesses, one of which is seed distribution, got their mailing lists mixed up or hacked or something, or maybe corporate sabotage. That they would somehow be dangerous or genetically altered is a bit hard to believe. Diseases and pests generally aren't passed on through cleaned seed, though there is a list of seeds that aren't allowed into the country due to their weedy potential.

If it's a real story the USDA will probably plant some of them to see what they are. My guess is that it's no real threat and more likely an attempt to either embarrass some Chinese company or they accidentally effed up themselves.

A question for the OP: have you ordered something from China recently, say from Amazon or eBay or something?

[Demovictory9]

28. I ordered seeds off of ebay not realizing it was a foreign supplier. empty envelope arrived with

a USDA form inside saying the seeds had been destroyed. Now I pay attn, make "US only" when ordering seeds.

[Rstrstx]

29. That's the exception rather than the rule

The majority of the time seeds just come through unless they're large or in a larger package.