Seed Cost!

[Seven Bends]

Similarly, Canadian seller Vesey's doesn't list any tomatoes or peppers for sale on their US shopping site. I noticed this two years ago when I bought some bean seeds from them and wanted to check out their tomato offerings.

[kayee]

I'm not surprised West Coast Seeds doesn't want to go through the hassle of the certificate, but I am a little surprised that Vesey's hasn't done it. Just out of curiosity I checked the next biggest two, and I didn't see anything on Stokes on McKenzie Seeds, either on single product pages or on their shipping information.

[bower]

It looks like the cost for a phyto certificate for less than 500 g of seed is around $50.
https://inspection.canada.ca/about-cfia ... 871296#c15
These regulations are obviously intended to regulate large producers of seeds.
For commercial seed producers in Canada, IDK if shipping across the border would also lead to additional costs, like inspecting the place where the seed is grown etc.

I did some reading about the Tomato Brown Rugose Virus and it seems to have devastating consequences in commercial greenhouses where the plants are constantly being pruned and tied for high density production, thus spreading it by contact. It is not a 'seed transmitted' virus, it is 'seedborne' meaning the virus can be present on the seedcoat or endosperm, not the embryo. So the actual rate of seedborne transmission is quite low - one study gave 2.8% as the rate of virus passing to the seedling, another study found 0.08%. The problem for commercial greenhouse tomato producers is that even one infected plant can lead to it spreading to the whole crop. And after that, it is really persistent on surfaces, and they can't get rid of it easily. The effect on fruit is really nasty too - a total loss. You do not want this virus, for sure.
OTOH, various seed treatment strategies for seedcoat sterilization including heat and chemical treatments also work against this virus.
It seems like the risk of getting this virus into your garden would be more likely through commercial fruit remains going into your home compost. They say it can also be present without symptoms in resistant tomatoes and peppers, which means that produce from affected greenhouses might spread it around.
I know it was reported in Ontario, afaik not in Alberta, nor here in NL either. We don't have much of a tomato or pepper industry here.

[kayee]

I can see certainly why smaller or mid sized companies (I'm including West Coast Seeds in mid-sized) wouldn't want to bother - it's probably a HUGE pain in the butt to get things inspected, then re-inspected every year (I'm assuming). But the larger three, they must do so much business across the border, it seems like it'd be worth their trouble. But if none of them are doing it (let's assume Stokes and McKenzie isn't right now) I guess it isn't? I mean, there's so many options for seed companies in the USA, why purchase from Canada I suppose?

[bower]

Some of the stuff I read described a crazy amount of cross-border action built into the industry, like seeds shipped to Canada from US, then seedlings shipped back to the US. No idea if that is still going on. There's always reasons for cross border stuff, with the currency values fluctuating and so on. Toss in Mexico as a third player for fruit and seed... But IDK if that is still on, or how they accomodate existing trade flows in the new regs and how they are enforced.
There are only a handful of countries where this virus is really widespread. But lockdown is lockdown, eh.