Over a month ago, I bought a little basil plant at a local nursery, brought it home, and put it in my grow room with all the vegetables that I had started from seed. Well, this basil plant had a nasty and contagious plant virus called CMV (cucumber mosaic virus), and it also had aphids, which spread the virus and wiped out my grow room. Worse yet, I had been putting the plants outside on sunny days to save electricity, and the virus spread to my garden and landscaping plants.
(Sorry I don't know how to embed pictures. Just Google "CMV virus tomatoes" and go to "images")
But that is not my problem; I know what I have to do. Any time I see the symptoms of the virus on any of my plants, I pull it out, roots and all, and destroy it. I just destroyed my beautiful clematis yesterday.
No, my problem is this:
The nursery where I bought the basil, and one other nursery in town (I assume they have a common supplier) are massively infected with this virus. I went in personally over a week ago and told employees what the situation was. Nothing happened. A steady stream of customers is going out the door, carrying obviously infected plants. Yesterday, I sent e-mails to the management of both nurseries. No reply.
My knowledge puts me into a difficult place morally (and possibly legally). If I put out this information publicly, both nurseries are likely to go out of business (which may be unavoidable anyway). Could I be sued as a result? I could go to the newspaper, I guess, but they might be very reluctant to publish the story, as both these nurseries are family-owned landmark establishments that have been in business in our town for over fifty years.
What should I do?