Dan and Jeff Standing Strong by their Report

March 15, 2008

We stand by the report and its findings. Here are our responses:

1.  We sent a draft of the report to our references at
HortResearch for review and fact checking.  To-date we
have not received any written or other comments on our
report from these or other HortResearch staff.  We did
receive an e-mail from Mike Butcher (of PipFruit New
Zealand, who works closely with HortResearch) with a
minor technical correction that we changed on the
final.  Mike's e-mail did include a compliment on our
work on the report.  As you know Mike Butcher was
quoted yesterday in the Monterey Herald in support of
our work.

2.  The Specific Comments are quite minor and appear
to come more from misunderstandings of what is
reported.  Nowhere are the basic findings questioned.
We never advocated the introduction of non-native
predators of LBAM.  We believe these predators already
exist in California.  We support the scientific
premise of James Carey that LBAM has been here for
decades and these native predators are keeping LBAM
and "native" leaf-rollers in check.

3.  We appreciate the typographic and other errors
pointed out by the reviewer in the report's
presentation but these again do not undermine the
basic findings of the report.

There is an inherent conflict with statements of Max
Suckling as he is part of the TWG within the CDFA and
USDA LBAM Eradication Program.

4.  Jeff and I have decades of experience working with
plants and finding insects.  We have become much more
attuned to this insect on plants since its discovery
and consider ourselves experts in finding it.

The rest of the comments are too minor to respond to.

We are not sure how best to get our responses out to
these claims of CDFA.  We want to underscore our
concern that CDFA reports that we did not respond to
comments on the draft from those we spoke with at
HortResearch.  As of today, we have not heard any
comments or criticisms.  We believe this statement
from CDFA is a fabrication.  We have to stop this as
it's intent is to discredit us and the report's
findings.

Still standing strong by the report.

Best,

Dan and Jeff