Legal and Practical Aspects of the Relationships Between the Federal and State Quarantine Offices and Between National and Regional Plant Boards

Legal relationship comes into existence between Federal and State quarantine officers when an interstate plant quarantine, having intrastate features, is put into force within the United States. Practical relationships between Federal and State quarantine officers may rise from sources such as state instituted quarantines imposing restrictions that bear incidentally upon interstate commerce, and international quarantines which bear onerously upon some section or sections of the United States. To make these relationships efficient it is necessary that the Federal and State quarantine officers should make their plans and pursue their duties in a spirit of cooperation and mutual helpfulness. In view of the fact that nearly all plant quarantines interfere somewhere, somehow with private rights and may constitute an interference with the legitimate business of large groups of our citizens, it is obvious that in addition to insect and plant disease distribution facts, the effect of such quarantine action upon the legitimate business, bound to be effected by it, must be considered as an important factor in determining when, where and how quarantine lines shall be laid. Quarantines must not only be laid with judgment and extreme care but they must be enforced with sympathetic consideration for the interests of those citizens whose legitimate business is being injured thereby and not in the spirit of the blood hound of the law engaged solely in the process of catching the evil doer. The national plant board is designed to represent the interests of the regional plant boards where these interests are national in scope and serves in matters of this kind as a medium through which to present to the Federal Plant Quarantine and Control Administration the combined views of the state authorities. Naturally also the national plant board must think along national lines and afford leadership to the regional plant boards.