At times online shopping seems to be a gamble. You order something, but receive an entirely different thing. Like a man in Bengal ordered Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto, but received Bhagvad Gita. People have even received tiles a pieces of marble instead of mobile phones. And now people in nearly six US states have received seed packets, labeled as jewelry from China.
The unsolicited packages have prompted officials to warn that the seeds could be environmentally harmful, the DailyMail reported. Several residents in Washington, Virginia, Utah, Kansas, Arizona and Louisiana received small packets labeled as jewelry from China, but contained seeds. On Friday, the agriculture department in Washington got several reports of people receiving seeds from China that they never ordered.
People shared the photographs of the packets on Facebook that had labels which said'bracelet' and a 'ring' and the address showing that they were dispatched from Suzhou city in the Jiangsu providence of East China. The officials have termed the act as agricultural smuggling and asked people to report to them for further instructions.
The agriculture department officials asked the people to not plant the seeds and not open the sealed packages. "This is known as agricultural smuggling. Report it to USDA and maintain the seeds and packaging until USDA instructs you what to do with the packages and seeds. They may be needed as evidence," they said in a Facebook post.
Similarly, several gardeners in UK too have reported having received unsolicited seed packets labeled as ear studs from China. The mystery packets have been sent to customers who earlier made seed purchases through sites such as Amazon marketplace and eBay.
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