Work
SITC plays a major role in interdicting smuggled agricultural products before and after they reach US markets. SITC's work is successfully accomplished through numerous market surveys, analysis of trends and the use of various intelligence tools and data systems. SITC officers and analysts are experts in developing commercial targeting information, examining trends in international trade, identifying contraband in commerce, and at the consumer level. SITC staff also works closely with Department of Homeland Security Customs and Border Protection (CBP) at the Ports of Entry to interdict smuggled products.
In the marketplace, SITC officers conduct inspection surveys and intense trade compliance activities, looking to uncover prohibited or regulated items. This work may lead to trace backs to the Port of Entry in order to identify the distributor. Once a smuggling pathway is identified, it is shut down often resulting in civil and/or criminal prosecution, and recalls to safeguard American agriculture. The market place for SITC encompasses major distribution centers, flea markets, animal/plant and insect trade shows, large and small chain stores, roadside vendors and your neighborhood corner store. Lastly, the program has influenced changes in federal regulations in its efforts to regulate trade while promoting outreach and education to the public.
The SITC staff works closely with other federal, state and local agencies in order to accomplish the program mission. SITC Officers work with the State Plant Health Directors to aid in the identification of Hot Zones. Through partnerships with other agencies, SITC has provided other Federal (CBP, OIG, IES, ICE, FSIS, FDA, etc.) and State officials (state agriculture agencies) with information leading to seizures, the stop sell of products, criminal prosecutions and administrative violations.
While the SITC initiatives are often reactive, SITC takes many steps to be proactive which ultimately results in less cost to the American public for eradication programs. SITC Officers monitor increased threats with increased vigilance to monitor potential high risk smuggling pathways. The SITC staff works closely with liaison groups and industry to identify and address potential smugglers and various trade compliance issues. SITC Officers are flexible enough to be responsive to a wide breadth of agricultural threats, issues and challenges.
Read more about this topic: Smuggling Interdiction And Trade Compliance
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“... possibly there is no needful occupation which is wholly unbeautiful. The beauty of work depends upon the way we meet it—whether we arm ourselves each morning to attack it as an enemy that must be vanquished before night comes, or whether we open our eyes with the sunrise to welcome it as an approaching friend who will keep us delightful company all day, and who will make us feel, at evening, that the day was well worth its fatigues.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)
“The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
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has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
...
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)
“A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state, and this state is constant.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)