Page 8 - profiles 2019 working copy containing all bios as of Feb 20 final version

supervised a staff that worked cooperatively with the New York State
Department of Agriculture and Markets. In 2008, I became an Agriculturist at

APHIS headquarters in Riverdale, Maryland, as National Coordinator for
Official Control. I engineered a new program that would allow plant pest
programs administered by state departments of agriculture to qualify for federal
regulation at ports of entry by Customs and Border Protection (CBPs)

Agriculture Specialists. Cognizant of U.S. law and foreign trade agreements, I
worked closely with CBP as well as the National Plant Board, a group
representing the state departments of agriculture bureaus, which focus on plant

health.

I became the coordinator for APHIS’s Agriculture Quarantine Inspection fees,

which in 2017 totaled over $780 million. The fees fund most agricultural
inspection activities for CBP and USDA. I worked closely with CBP and
stakeholders and I also developed the agency’s new framework for a
multifunctional team to more fully address the responsibilities associated with

setting the fees. I retired after a total of 37 years of federal service, devoted to
keeping Americans safe and healthy.

I am Dr. Howard E. Waterworth, a Veteran, and I worked for the U.S.
Department of Agriculture. I tested fruit tree samples for virus infections,
conducted research on plant viruses, and published results in scientific journals
to assist scientists and the public. Nearly all of the horticultural and agronomic

crops grown in the United States today evolved in other countries and were
brought here as the U.S. became inhabited. Today, it is an important program of
the U.S. Department of Agriculture begun around 1900. More than 600,000

samples, all of which are documented in Official Records and published in
some 50 volumes, are available to the public. In the early days, the process
inadvertently brought to the U.S. thousands of insects and diseases new to the
U.S. For example, a fungus in elm logs imported from the Netherlands became

established in our native elm trees and has killed nearly all elm trees East of the
Mississippi River and is known as Dutch Elm Disease. An imported bacterium

from the Near East kills apple and pear trees. An imported fungus has caused
billions of dollars in losses to our cereal crops and continues to be a major
problem. To reduce losses caused by imported diseases and insects, the
Department of Agriculture now holds imported plants in quarantine to ensure

they will not harm our crops.

I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, received a Bachelor’s in Agriculture

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