The life-size porcelain figure of a man wearing Chinese robes and kneeling in prayer was held steady by wooden crating and braces on a wooden pallet in a shipping container parked on Seattle's Harbor Island yesterday. Tom Grazian and other workers from Paratex, a pest control company working at the Pacific Coast Container Inc.  Northwest yard on Harbor Island, draped heavy tarpaulins over the container and five others loaded with lamps that had just arrived from China.
Then, as Pete Harader of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service monitored the operation, deadly methyl bromide gas was pumped into the shipping containers under the tarps to kill the Asian long-homed beetle, which has a voracious appetite for wood.
But after Dec. 17, that procedure may change.  That's when new USDA regulations published Friday in the Federal Register are scheduled to go into effect in a stepped-up attack on the long-homed beetle.
For years, shippers have hired companies like Pacific Coast Container and its subcontractor, Paratex, to fumigate for the Asian beetles and other pests that infest wooden pallets, braces and packing chips arriving from China, Hong Kong and other countries.
"This fumigation process now has grown to be about 15 percent of our business," said Kevin Keeler, Pacific Coast Container's general manager.
Under the new rules, all shipping containers from China and Hong Kong must be treated before the container is loaded onto an U.S.-bound ship.  Those found not to meet the new standards may be shipped back to China unloaded.
Infestations of the Asian long-homed beetle have been discovered in Brooklyn, N.Y., and suburban Chicago, prompting Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman to order the emergency regulations.
About $5.6 billion worth of waterbome merchandise was imported through the Port of Seattle ha year from China, including toys, clothing, footwear, luggage, telecommunications and recording equipment, records show. Another $1.1 billion of similar waterborne items arrived at the port from Hong Kong.
"It's too early for us to speculate how these new regulations will affect us," port spokesman Imbert Matthee said.  "A lot of cargo comes in from China packed in wooden crates and pallets, and it is an issue we will have to keep an eye on."
The port operates a fumigation facility at Terminal 30, and it the Port of Tacoma, where shipments from China also arrive.
"Once the new regulations go into effect, we will continue to pull containers off for inspection to verify the preventive measures indicated on their certificates, and that they accurately reflect what was done in China before they were shipped," said David Reeves, an Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service staff officer at the Agriculture Department's headquarters near Washington, D.C.

"Owners of the merchandise in affected shipments would have several choices, including having the entire shipment returned to China or, in some cases, having the packing material removed," Reeves said.
Keeler is hoping his company still will have a role to play despite the change in regulations.
It would be far more expensive to return containers to China and Hong Kong for treatment than to treat them at Pacific container's Harbor Island facility, he said. "And it wouldn't be any more effective," Keeler added.