By Vicky Boyd
A relatively new San Joaquin County Agricultural Commissioner Office employee, Waylon, has a nose for agricultural contraband and has been described as “one of the bestest ag inspector hires ever.”
The 2-year-old black Lab mix, who is partnered with handler Erik Baxter, inspects packages at many of the county’s express carrier facilities including UPS, FedEx and DHL. The team also works in Stanislaus County as part of efforts to intercept pests that may hitchhike on illegal agricultural shipments, said San Joaquin County Ag Commissioner Kamal Bagri.
The detector dog team complements county agricultural biologists who profile and inspect agricultural packages at the facilities.
San Joaquin Farm Bureau First Vice President James Chinchiolo, who farms cherries and walnuts with his father near Lodi and Linden, applauded these proactive exclusion efforts designed to avert costly pest eradication programs.
“The saying ‘nip it in the bud’ is exactly the right saying for a situation like this,” said Chinchiolo. “Before it has grown too large, it can be nipped in the bud.”
He pointed to the spotted wing drosophila fly, initially confirmed in California in 2008, as an example of a costly invasive pest. A native of Asia, the fly has since spread throughout the state and become the bane of small fruit and tree fruit growers, who spend millions of dollars annually to manage it.
During the cherry season, Chinchiolo may have to apply two to three additional insecticide sprays to manage spotted wing drosophila, depending on the season and how long he plans to let the fruit hang on the trees. Since its arrival, many packinghouses have established zero tolerance for spotted wing drosophila larvae infesting cherries.
“I think I would be much closer to being an organic cherry grower if I didn’t have the concerns with spotted wing drophila,” he said.
USDA grant recipient
Knowing the value of detector dog teams, Bagri successfully sought U.S. Department of Agriculture funding to help underwrite a local pair. The county had a team in the early 2010s, and Bagri had seen their increased pest interceptions. “Dogs can do much better jobs than humans,” she said.
In 2023, San Joaquin County was among the counties that benefited from a $4 million USDA grant awarded to the California Department of Food and Agriculture for additional detector dogs. The financial support was in addition to more than $15 million in USDA Plant Protection Act funding for other California pest detection and exclusion activities.
After the grant announcement, Bagri met with employees to gauge individual interest in becoming a dog handler, a time-consuming commitment. Baxter, who was a biologist at the time, volunteered.
Earlier this year, he spent more than six weeks in Georgia at the National Detector Dog Training Center, which instructs both USDA and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol teams.
When asked how he became paired with his partner, Baxter said Waylon actually chose him. The black Lab mix had been returned to a shelter twice before being donated to the detector dog training center because his high energy was incompatible with families.
But Bagri said that trait, when managed with exercise and strict routines, makes Waylon an excellent detector dog.
Sniffing out smuggled produce
Waylon was initially trained to recognize five scents, including stone fruit, mangoes, guavas, apples and citrus. Baxter also included soil, since many intercepted plants have soil attached. After Waylon mastered the basics, his handler slowly adds new scents. Bagri said Waylon also is learning how to recognize mixed odors, since packages frequently contain more than one crop.
The detector dog team works mostly parcel facilities, considered high risk because packages may contain illegal shipments of fruits, vegetables, meats or soil that could harbor invasive pests.
Without detector dogs, ag inspectors at the facilities typically use a package profile and watch as parcels ride past them on a conveyor, Bagri said. If they see one that fits the description, they pull it to inspect for possible agricultural contraband.
“It’s not like they have x-ray vision to look through the boxes,” she said.
But dogs have a superpower – their keen noses, which are up to 100,000 times more sensitive than humans’.
During inspections at many facilities, the handler guides the dog to walk over the tops of packages, allowing the canine to sniff each one as it moves down the conveyor. When Waylon picks up a scent on which he’s been trained, he signals by vigorously pawing at the package, and Baxter removes it for inspection.
“Now, (Waylon’s) making our job much easier,” Bagri said about intercepting packages. “Especially at UPS, we don’t get to see the packages on the line. They’re already on the trucks. Before, we could only see so many parcels. Now with Waylon, it’s more efficient and more accurate.”
Since Waylon and Baxter began inspections in May, Bagri said they’ve already proven their worth by intercepting an uncertified shipment of sugar apples infested with live lesser snow scales and gray pineapple mealybugs. Neither pest is found in the California and could devastate the state’s ag industry should they sneak in, she said.
And Bagri is confident the detector team will only get better as they gain experience.
“You have to consider (Waylon’s) only 2 years old and he’s going to possibly work another eight years in the industry,” Bagri said. “He’s still so new – he’s still a puppy.”
More detector teams needed
The USDA owns Waylon, and he spends his off hours at a kennel in Lodi. Bagri said the USDA has strict rules about handlers not taking their teammates home for fear the dogs will become confused by different scents.
Currently the state has 14 detector dog teams, including San Joaquin County’s, but Bagri said she would like that increased to 30. As chair of the California Agricultural Commissioners and Sealers Association’s Pest Prevention Committee, she has traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for additional detector dogs being included in the Farm Bill.
Instead of having the funding for the dogs lumped in with overall pest prevention, Bagri said she’d prefer separate money just for the canines that can’t be spent on other activities.
“We’ve been asking the USDA and OMB (Office of Management and Budget) back in D.C. to provide funding for us,” she said. “Last year we negotiated into the Farm Bill for a separate appropriation just for detector dog teams.”
