Now how safe is this nation's food-supply chain? A USDA plant protection and quarantine officer stationed in Laredo, Texas, has admitted to illegally allowing agricultural products infested with a plant pest to enter the United States from Mexico since 2005.

According to the Department of Justice, Jose Homero Reyes, 48, pleaded guilty to three charges of conspiracy in failing to perform USDA-required fumigation of infested agricultural products before allowing them to enter the United States.

Trucks entering the U.S. from Mexico through Laredo determined to be carrying products infested with a plant pest are required by law to have their contents fumigated before leaving Laredo. A plant protection and quarantine officer, like Reyes, must be present at the time of the fumigation and present documentation of the process to the USDA. Since the fumigations typically take place after-hours, the quarantine officers are paid overtime for their work. Not only did Reyes admit to conspiring with a Laredo pest control service to falsify results of non-existent fumigations, he charged taxpayers overtime for his "service."

"As part of his guilty plea, Reyes admitted he provided consent to the freight forwarding company/customs broker, allowing the trucks carrying agricultural products infested with a plant pest to leave Laredo, knowing that the agricultural products were not properly fumigated. Reyes would also falsely claim overtime for hours he never worked in addition to submitting false written reports to the USDA falsely documenting the fumigation results," stated the Justice Department in a press release.

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After a five-month period without further explosions or lava flows, Mount St. Helens has been declared a temporarily sleeping volcano by scientists at the U.S. Geodetic Survey (USGS).

Following its disastrous major eruption in 1980 that killed 57 people, Mount St. Helens remained silent until Oct. 2004, when the volcano began a nerve-jangling stretch of periodic blasts of steam and ash, and lava flows that lasted until Jan. 2008.

While USGS has now lowered its volcano alert level from "Advisory" to "Normal," Mount St. Helens remains a dangerous volcano. "We know that Mount St. Helens will erupt again in the future in some mix of renewed dome building and more explosive behavior. However, at this point, we can't forecast when the next eruption will begin," said USGS scientists Cynthia Gardner in a press release.

Hoping to provide advanced warning of its next eruption, USGS conducts constant monitoring of Mount St. Helens for signs of renewed activity.

USGS lists 20 active and potentially active volcanoes in the continental United States, mostly in California, Washington State, and Oregon. Eleven of those volcanoes have erupted at least once in the last 200 years.

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