Over the past couple of weeks, people in all 50 states have been receiving random packages with unidentified seeds in them from China. State ag departments were instructing people to call them if they got one of these packages and not to plant the seeds. USDA has been looking into the situation since the beginning and they identified 14 different species of seeds being sent.
At first, people were worried that the seeds could be an invasive species that would harm the land in the United States, but that’s not the case. Some of the seeds that got identified were mustard, cabbage, hibiscus, mint, sage, rosemary, and lavender. None of the seeds are a harm to our land.
Officials think that the random packages of seeds were part of a “brushing” scam. Basically, a brushing scam is where sellers send out their product to people in order to write false positive reviews to make themselves look better. If they look better, their rating as a seller goes up, and then they sell more product.
Even though it was a strange event, at least it wasn’t anything more serious.
