Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Atlanta Perishables Complex
¶ 9:24 PM 
We get a lot of air cargo imported into Atlanta. By lots, I mean 746,500 metric tons in 2006.
Let us follow, say, a rose cut from a field in Colombia to your table.
Someone in Colombia picks the rose. She is probably a woman, probably low paid. Anyway, she does this first thing in the morning, hands the roses off at the office and they are driven to the airport at Cali.
Shipper files paperwork, puts the boxes of roses on a plane to Atlanta.
Plane lands. Roses get sent to Atlanta Perishables Complex at the airport where they are held pending USDA inspection and customs clearance. This may take hours. It may take a couple of days.
This is no regular warehouse. It is a giant refrigerator with different zones of coldness. The roses go in a room that is simply chilly -- to keep them fresh. Not all the way in the deep freeze with fishes and whatnot.
If the roses have bugs on them, APC has an incinerator to burn them. (To avoid getting billed for this pricey procedure _and_ losing out on their market, international flower growers coat their wares in pesticides. Cut flowers are about the most toxic thing in the grocery store after the cleaning chemicals.)
If we had been importing, say, a horse instead of roses, the beast would have been held at the Atlanta Quarantine Station. Its like a barn at the airport.
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PS, This month's African Dinner and a Movie is on Friday & Saturday: Yesterday. I mean...that's the name of the movie. Movie's free; dinner's $20.
