ABSTRACT
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was established in 1972. Its mission is “To provide leadership in ensuring the health and care of animals and plants, to improve agricultural productivity and competitiveness, and to contribute to the national economy and the public health.” Prior to 1972, this mission resided within the mandate of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). In a 29 October 1971 memorandum establishing the Service, the Acting Secretary of Agriculture stated, “It will remain the responsibility of ARS to provide the necessary research support required by APHIS.” Thus, research authority was retained in ARS, not delegated to APHIS. In a narrow sense, APHIS could be viewed as a key client of ARS in its reliance upon ARS for scientific results to accomplish its mission. However, from an external perspective and in a practical sense, the agencies have the same clients which perceive APHIS and ARS as the same service provider. Although organizationally separated, the agencies are partners in providing services to the same stakeholder groups. Within this partnership, ARS provides the basic science on agricultural problems and APHIS operationalizes the scientific results for application to specific problems. APHIS programs provide a conduit for introducing new technologies and scientific results into pest management systems and a forum for multidisciplinary collaboration to define and solve problems. Perhaps nowhere is the transfer of ARS scientific results to the problems of departmental clients more direct than in the area of addressing phytosanitary barriers to free import/export of commodities. Direct outcomes of these ARS scientific outputs are availability of imported commodities to the American public and the access of United States (U.S.) agricultural exports to foreign markets.
