Underunderstood

Closing the Loop on China's Mystery Seeds

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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
    • ...more
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