User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

Mysterious Chinese seed warning!!

I just read on the Internet that people here in America are mysteriously receiving packages of seed that appears to be from China. I don't know what or who's behind the motive of this strange mystery, but people are being warned against planting the seed. Has anybody else heard of this?

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

That's scary. They were just saying to do not touch the contents of the package, but to seal the package up in a plastic bag and report the seeds to the USDA. It's obvious now that whoever's behind this is out to kill people. People know that seeds are hard to find now so someone poisoned some seeds and sent them out, knowing that people would happily open them to plant them. I just really wonder if this is China's doing, or someone's trying to frame China.

As soon as I heard about all this, I started texting my friends and family to make sure they heard it all.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

PLEASE! There has been NO REPORT of them being poisonous, unless the person you heard about was allergic to the particular seeds they received.

This is how misinformation is spread. Don’t text stuff until you do thorough research yourself to your satisfaction.

I Searched and came up with 5 articles — scanned and skimmed, they all mostly say —
- USDA and state ag want these reported. Contact your local official department.
- contents have been random seeds. (Some of the photos I’ve seen only look like sunflower seeds. Some look familiar but I can’t remember to ID.)
- don’t open them and definitely don’t plant unknown seeds because they could be invasive species.
- don’t throw them out << this one was a puzzler until I read the context behind the warning >>

Here’s the typical message —
The Montana Department of Agriculture said in a statement Monday that the seeds have not yet been identified.
"They could be invasive, meaning they may have the potential to introduce diseases to local plants, or could be harmful to livestock," the statement said.
Steve Cole, director of Clemson University's Regulatory Services unit in South Carolina, said: "If these seeds should bear invasive species, they may be a threat to our environment and agriculture. We don't want unknown species planted or thrown out where they may wind up sprouting in a landfill."
.
.
.
We’ll know more in a couple of days since they have been collecting the seeds and testing them.


By the way — I’m starting to recognize news/media outlets that regularly use click-bait headlines. You click on them and the article is sensationalistic or contents have nothing to do with the implications in the headlines. :roll:

User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

There's a longstanding thing where Amazon sellers buy their own products from Amazon then collude with others to place false "verified buyer" reviews on Amazon for those products.

The products are sent to random people across the United States.

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

The story we heard on Monday TV News channel 2 was completely different than what we heard on Tuesday TV News channel 5. Both stories are about mysterious seeds that were never ordered. 6:40 am 7/29/2020 TV just announced they will tell about mysterious seeds after this commercial.

Packages are all post marked from China. Packaged do not all contain the says type seeds. So far it has not been determined what type seeds they are. Do not throw seeds in the trash. Send your seeds to the department of agriculture. Speculation is this is some type of a scam.

Pictures I saw on TV one pack of seeds looks to me like black sun flower seeds. Another seed package looks to me like millet or mustard seeds.

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

But then who was allegedly poisoned? I cannot see someone getting an allergic reaction just by touching the seeds. Some (maybe not all of them) could still be poisoned.

I saw, pictures to, I saw squash seed, beans, sunflower seed and millet type seed. I still don't but it past someone to poison the seeds, but I'm going to wait for more information.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Reference —

:arrow: Can Simply Smelling Peanuts Cause an Allergic Reaction? | UNC Health Talk
https://healthtalk.unchealthcare.org/ca ... -reaction/



:arrow: Food hypersensitivity by inhalation | Clinical and Molecular Allergy | Full Text
https://clinicalmolecularallergy.biomed ... 6-7961-7-4
While much focus has been given to food hypersensitivity reactions following oral ingestion, reactions by skin contact and inhalation have slowly gained interest. Food allergy by the non-ingestant route is probably under-recognized and under-reported

User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

Okay, so we can forget about this now.
But then who was allegedly poisoned?
1. Nobody got hurt. Zero. Nobody.
Rumors of injury were based on nothing more than, "I heard that someone said that they heard..." speculation.
Pure 100% rumors and 100% false. :shock:

2. This was EXACTLY as I said in my previous post, that it was part of a reviews scheme, where someone purchases something and sends it to a random person, then writes a review about the purchase.

That's all it was.
8)

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

If the rumor about the person that got sick from handling the seeds was heard on TV, then it probably a lie. TV media people are good about making stuff sound worse than it really is. To be honest I just don't watch the news on TV. I either hear about stuff from other people, or read it on the internet.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

That’s worrying that you can’t seem to get reliable reporting and journalism from your local media outlets. If there are different choices available, be sure to try them all out so you can evaluate them.

Here’s one of several references I used to further research and understand HOW and what to make of it all —

Detecting Bias in the News - Savvy Info Consumers - Library Guides at University of Washington Libraries
https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/evaluate/bias

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

TomatoNut95 wrote:
Thu Jul 30, 2020 11:44 am
If the rumor about the person that got sick from handling the seeds was heard on TV, then it probably a lie. TV media people are good about making stuff sound worse than it really is. To be honest I just don't watch the news on TV. I either hear about stuff from other people, or read it on the internet.
President Ronald Raygun cancelled the law that requires all News reports to tell the truth. WE need the tell the truth law again.

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

Now why in the world did Ronald Regan do that???? You're right, the news needs to tell the truth and not a pack of lies. I suppose I cannot say that all the stations are bad. The first news website I was reading about the seeds on was Fox News.

User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

>>>>>If the rumor about the person that got sick from handling the seeds was heard on TV

There is no evidence that any News organization reported that. That was 100% what Gary350 said he heard it from someone else.

That's not a legitimate citation. That is a rumor. That is why I removed his comment from this discussion.

In the future, please let's not talk about what we "heard" without linking to a citation for it.

>>>>>WE need the tell the truth law again.

No. We need to link to legitimate sources of information.

The other day I was scrolling through radio stations and stopped at a talk show where they were SPECULATING that the Covid 19 numbers were wrong, based on an UNVERIFIED report of "hundreds" of dead were being misclassified as Covid victims when they had died of other causes. The talk radio host even said, "If this is true..." to signal that they were talking about an unsubstantiated rumor. And THEN they started talking about this rumor as if it was a real event.

So the problem isn't people exactly. A leading cause of misinformation is talk radio hosts who are pushing an agenda.

Another cause is Russian misinformation that gets turned into memes and then makes it way back to the talk show hosts because memes are little packets of outrage and button pushing, which is what keeps the talk show hosts popular because they make it seem like you are getting unfiltered information when in fact it's the most filtered and biased information of all.

Watch the news. Stop listening to talk show hosts.

Please, let's not talk about politics. All political posts will be removed.

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

Latest thing I heard was that the seeds we're bad. They were designed, that when planted, would kill surrounding crops and kill animals that ate them.

Vanisle_BC
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1354
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:02 pm
Location: Port Alberni, B.C. Canada, Zone 7 (+?)

I heard that you can believe just about anything you read on the internet, or in the popular mass media. :roll:

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

The seeds are being tested, so I'm sure what I heard is true. However, I'll do some research on it.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

As I posted earlier, this was the official message that had been released to the various state and local agencies and were quoted one way or another by most/all the news media
applestar wrote:
Tue Jul 28, 2020 10:58 pm
Here’s the typical message —
The Montana Department of Agriculture said in a statement Monday that the seeds have not yet been identified.
"They could be invasive, meaning they may have the potential to introduce diseases to local plants, or could be harmful to livestock," the statement said.
Steve Cole, director of Clemson University's Regulatory Services unit in South Carolina, said: "If these seeds should bear invasive species, they may be a threat to our environment and agriculture. We don't want unknown species planted or thrown out where they may wind up sprouting in a landfill."
When they are “telephone”-game repeated several times (do you remember that game?), the result is basically what you might have heard from non-cited, filtered source, like the example you gave.

As gardeners, I think we all know what the officials were talking about. But non-gardeners may mistake the intent and science behind their statements. It’s really the media’s JOB to EXPLAIN these nerd-speak to everyday people.

...personally, I like the ones that tend to quote the official statements (so you would recognize/will be familiar with the language of it when you hear it again later), then say “OK, WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?” And then proceed to EXPLAIN in everyday language that ordinary folks can easily understand. I usually come away feeling like I actually LEARNED something and could explain it to the next person. I always tell my children that they haven’t actually learned something unless you can explain it. (I say to them OK, show me ...explain it to me.)

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Recently I’ve been coming across and reading pretty informative articles at VICE — they dub them as "explanatory articles”.
Today, I saw this one and remembered this thread —

Hundreds of Americans Planted 'Chinese Mystery Seeds'

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/akz9 ... tery-seeds

User avatar
Gary350
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 7396
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2009 1:59 pm
Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

I think people look for trouble.

All I read is doom & gloom about Chinese seeds. One person said, I planted seeds and it spread through the backyard. WTF does that mean? WHAT spread through the yard? WHAT did the seeds grow? Did anything grow or are you in the Twilight Zone.

NO WHERE have I read what any of the seeds grew. I see seed pictures that look like, melons, squash, and many other things but NO ONE ever says what the seeds grow. SHOW me 1 place where it says what seeds grow, I have not found it yet? Now that panic is started people receive seeds they go into panic mode and make them self sick with worry then end up in hospital emergency room. They did it to them self.

Seeds arrive in mail boxes and it freaks people out. It only freaks people out because someone started this online panic to scare YOU and it is working.

I order seeds online & they don't arrive for 4 months by then I have forgotten I ordered seeds. I don't remember ordering seeds but here they are from Chine exactly what I wanted? I order from USA seed company & they do Drop Ship from China that freaks me out a little bit when seeds I want come from a different place where I did not order them.

The whole country is already in panic mode from Covid-19 it does not take much to scare people with seeds. LOL

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

What I took away from that article was SHOCK that so many people didn’t exercise caution or tried to verify what to do with them on receiving them. ... and a little bit of hope that since we did discuss it in this thread, our membership handled them properly and wisely.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

As for EATING them —

Sowing Uncertainty: What We Do and Don’t Know about the Planting of Pesticide-Treated Seed | BioScience | Oxford Academic
https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/art ... 90/5805569

— Technological advances in pesticide formulations and application methods have profoundly changed pesticide use in agriculture. Since the turn of the century, pesticides have been increasingly applied as a seed treatment, by coating the seed with one or more pesticides and a sticking agent. Over the 2012–2014 period, approximately 90% of corn, 76% of soybean, 62% of cotton, and 56% of winter wheat acres in the United States were planted with treated seed (Kynetec 2019).


Pesticide seed coatings are widespread but underreported -- ScienceDaily
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 215632.htm

— The results appear today (March 17) in the journal BioScience.
"One of the most important findings of this study is that farmers know less about pesticides applied to their seeds than pesticides applied in other ways," said Margaret Douglas, assistant professor of environmental studies, Dickinson College. "This is likely because seed is often sold with a 'default' treatment that contains a mix of different pesticide active ingredients, and the treated seed is exempt from some labeling requirements.


...and don’t forget FUNGICIDES, too


Seed treatment and its implication for fungicide exposure assessment | Journal of Exposure Science &amp; Environmental Epidemiology
https://www.nature.com/articles/7500312

— Fungicides are frequently applied to seed to protect from disease. Farmers may be exposed to fungicides through both personal application and use of treated seed. For some crops, such as corn and peanuts, virtually all seed is treated, while for other crops seed treatment is less common (Houck et al., 1975; Desai et al., 1997b; McFarlane, 1980; Kommedahl and Windels, 1986; USDA, 1996, 1997; Agarwal and Sinclair, 1997; USEPA, 1999; Koenning, 2000, 2002). Seeds may be treated by the seed distributor, by the farmer, or both, with the majority of seed treatment performed by the distributor.

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

I never received the seeds, but as a gardener, I would've been curious to have tried them myself. However, it's true that they could still be an invasive species, or not safe to handle.

My cousin sent me this picture, it gave me an interesting thought on how interesting it would be if the seeds mutated into large, meat eating creatures that tried to eat everything. 😆
Attachments
Screensho.jpg

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

AUDREY!!!! :-()

Vanisle_BC
Greener Thumb
Posts: 1354
Joined: Mon Apr 13, 2015 9:02 pm
Location: Port Alberni, B.C. Canada, Zone 7 (+?)

applestar wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 12:10 pm
What I took away from that article was SHOCK that so many people didn’t exercise caution ......
.... or, how much of it was true and how much was regurgitated social-media nonsense; see TomatoNut's posted 'photo' (brilliantly faked, by the way.)

User avatar
webmaster
Site Admin
Posts: 9476
Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 12:59 pm
Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

As I already posted TWICE, there is nothing to the rumors.

This was part of an Amazon review boosting scheme, nothing more.

A company buys its own products, sends it to random addresses then pays people to write fake reviews on Amazon.

Nobody got hurt. It was not a plot to send poisonous plants.

This is a big nothing.
😉

User avatar
TomatoNut95
Super Green Thumb
Posts: 2069
Joined: Sun May 26, 2019 11:11 am
Location: Texas Zone 8

Vanisle_BC wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 3:43 pm
applestar wrote:
Wed Sep 09, 2020 12:10 pm
What I took away from that article was SHOCK that so many people didn’t exercise caution ......
.... or, how much of it was true and how much was regurgitated social-media nonsense; see TomatoNut's posted 'photo' (brilliantly faked, by the way.)
I know the photo is a fake, it was just a joke. :wink:

sunlightsolace
Newly Registered
Posts: 4
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2016 4:43 pm

WEBMASTER (or some admin) can someone tell me how to delete my account please?!?! I haven't found a link where I can contact somone.

User avatar
applestar
Mod
Posts: 30514
Joined: Thu May 01, 2008 7:21 pm
Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

Apparently this might have been an even BIGGER nothing. Also I never realized there had been such a huge hoolabaloo and so many conspiracy theories surrounding the incidents :shock:

The Truth Behind the Amazon Mystery Seeds From China - The Atlantic



Return to “Non-Gardening Related Hoo-ha and Foo”