Closing the Loop on China's Mystery Seeds

Underunderstood

• Episode: Closing the Loop on China's Mystery Seeds
• Website: Underunderstood
• Feed URL: https://anchor.fm/s/7e5e9c4/podcast/rss
• Duration: 00:43:08
• Published: 2020-11-24 13:00

What ever happened with those mysterious seeds that were showing up in U.S. mailboxes?

• 00:33 - Michigan Department of Agriculture tweet
• 03:10 - USDA answers frequently asked questions about the mystery seeds, including “What should I do if I already planted the seeds?”
• 02:30 - Facebook post from the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development
• 03:52 - Invasive species are no joke!!!!
• 04:50 - As of this writing, Snopes said there was no motive determined for the seed shipments: Are Americans Receiving Unsolicited Mailings of Seeds from China? (Snopes)
• 09:32 - USDA still hasn’t found anything to cause major concern, but it has now identified more species and some viruses. This is an updated comment as of Nov. 18: “Altogether, we have identified approximately 460 taxa of seeds. We have detected 2 quarantine insect pests using x-ray and 28 Federal Noxious weeds based on identifications by APHIS botanists.
  We have also identified 6 quarantine significant viruses or viroids using molecular testing.” Also, here are some photos of U.S.D.A. investigating the seeds with microscopes.
• 14:29 - Jason Koebler and Emanuel Maiberg of Motherboard. The last story Underunderstood collaborated on with Motherboard was this one.
• 15:05 - Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds' (Motherboard)
• 19:16 - Zack Franklin in action
• 22:44 - Amazon explains fulfilled by Amazon and a little bit about fulfilled by merchant.
• 30:55 - ”The mysterious seed is back! Shenzhen cross-border seller actually sends parcels here” (forum post)
• 31:31 - Moss’s website for Amazon sellers and Moss on Zhihu.
• 34:07 - Honest Buyers Club on Facebook is an example of one of these groups. Once you get involved, you’ll start to get one-on-one messages from sellers. To clarify, I (Adrianne) have never actually ordered anything, I just lurk and try to harass people into doing an interview (100% failure rate). I’m definitely not endorsing giving your address out to strangers on the internet, but I think these guys are mostly legit. So, maybe you could give them, like, a PO box?
• 36:06 - ”Evaluation blacklist” — a crowdsourced list of people who accept free gifts without providing the requisite review