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USDA expands imported fire ant quarantine area in OklahomaOklahoma Recently, the USDA Animal Plant Health Inspection Service named 12 additional counties to the list of counties under a state and federal Imported fire ant quarantine. The new counties include: Atoka, Coal, Cotton, Garvin, Jackson, Jefferson, LeFlore, Murray, Pontotoc, Pushmataha, Stephens, and Tillman. Counties previously included in the quarantine include Bryan, Jefferson, McCurtain, Marshall, Carter, Choctaw, Comanche, Johnston and Love. Sancho Dickinson, director of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food, and Forestry's Consumer Protection Services Division, said the quarantine includes soils, plants with soil attached, grass sod, used soil moving equipment, hay and straw, and anything else deemed a threat by any authorized agent of ODAFF or USDA. "No movement of these regulated articles will be allowed intrastate or interstate," he said. "These items will have to be certified by either federal or state inspection before being shipped out of the quarantine area." Other states with counties under quarantine for IFA include Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas. The entire states of Florida and Louisiana are under IFA quarantine as is the entire territory of Puerto Rico.
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