CAC to take legal action against Mexican Hass imports
CAC to take legal action against Mexican Hass imports
At a board meeting Thursday, March 15, the California Avocado Commission "voted unanimously to take aggressive action against the importation of Mexican avocados with dangerous scale pests coming into California," according to a March 16 commission memo to the industry.
The commissioners agreed to follow three courses of action, according to the memo: to "continue to apply extreme pressure on all fronts" to resolve a "jurisdictional issue between the California Department of Food & Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture" arising out of differences between state and federal definitions of what constitutes an excludable pest; to introduce legislation at the state level "to reduce the risk of pest and disease infestations in avocados imported into California from countries with known phytosanitary problems; and to file a lawsuit against the USDA to suspend shipments of Mexican avocados into California."
CAC will "file a legal complaint asserting that the government's import protocol for Mexican avocados is defective. The complaint will be accompanied by a Motion for a Preliminary Injunction -- a request to the court that all shipments of Mexican avocados into California be halted because of the threat of imminent irreparable injury to California growers," the memo stated.
Regarding the first point, the memo noted that "USDA still has not officially responded to CDFA's request for modification of a cooperative agreement that would allow federal inspectors to turn scale-infested shipments over to CDFA for disposition."
Effective Feb. 1, the USDA allowed Mexican-grown Hass avocados to enter California for the first time since the 1920s under a strict protocol designed to assure that no exotic pests potentially harmful to California's avocado industry would be imported with the fruit.
As of Feb. 19, CDFA inspectors had rejected 11 of 44 loads of avocados crossing into California in interstate commerce due to detection of armored scale pests thought to be invasive. Subsequently, a CDFA spokesperson acknowledged that pest finds in 10 of the 11 loads had been misidentified and were actually a type of scale already in California.
More recently, armored scale insects were found by Los Angeles County agricultural inspectors on Mexican-grown Hass avocados on the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, according to a March 15 article in the North County Times. The fruit was taken off the market and fumigated.
One concern of both the CAC and the CDFA has been a disagreement between the state and USDA as to what constitutes an excludible pest. State inspectors check loads of fruit coming into California from other states and reject loads when they find species of scale insects not already established in California. However, state inspectors have no jurisdiction at international border crossings such as those near San Diego, and the USDA inspectors there allow fruit into the state even though it may contain pests that California law prohibits.
In a March 19 CAC memo, the commission urged "state regulators to stand firm in their resolve to reject shipments of Mexican avocados found to contain invasive species of armored scale. CDFA recently told CAC that it is seeking to 'reopen the discussion on USDA's 1985 Risk Assessment pertaining to armored scale.' According to CDFA sources, if USDA is unwilling to do so, the state agency will 'remain at loggerheads with USDA for awhile' as it continues to enforce state phytosanitary policy by rejecting shipments found to contain quarantine pests."
Ron Campbell, who represents APEAM, an association of avocado growers, packers and exporters in Michoacan, Mexico, and also MHAIA, the Mexican Avocado Importers Association, told The Produce News March 19, "We were caught completely off guard" by CAC's decision to seek an injunction against entry of Mexican Hass avocados into the state.
"We have been working very closely with the avocado commission for over two years now," Mr. Campbell said. "We had a very close working relationship with them. And in a matter of a few days, they turned away from all this good will and bridge building and fence mending. They turned the clocks back to 1996 [when Mexican avocados were first allowed into some Northeastern states]."
According to Mr. Campbell, the people at the California Avocado Commission have "known about these scales since avocados have been coming into the United States" and have never previously expressed an objection. "This scale insect was nothing to them until a few angry growers out there made them do a complete about-face on their position on it. Now all of a sudden it is a risk, where in the past it was nothing. They didn't even consider it to be anything."
The initial confusion over the identification of some of the scale insects found on Mexican fruit "leads me to believe that they don't really know what they have there, but they are taking action, they are erring on the side of caution by keeping this pest out," said Mr. Campbell. But "scales are common in agriculture. There is scale in commercial produce, and armored scale is a non-mobile pest that does not present a phytosanitary risk to agriculture. This is contrived. It is an effort to limit the supply of fruit in California, boost prices and to make money. It is more or less just the California Avocado Commission being populists for their industry. I don't believe they really believe it is a risk or they would have brought it up long before now."
Tom Bellamore, senior vice president and corporate counsel for CAC, told The Produce News that because of the pending litigation, he could not comment on whether the commission had expressed concern prior to Jan. 31 over the specific pests now in question.
However, after checking sources within his department, Steve Lyle, CDFA's director of public affairs, confirmed to The Produce News that the department's concern with regard to the scale pests "is a discussion with the USDA that we have been having for some time, significantly predating the February 1 shipment date of Hass avocados from Mexico and the detection of the scale pests of concern."
He said that it is "also worth noting that in response to our request that the USDA reconsider its position on the scale pest, the feds have committed to establishing a technical working group" to examine the issue. "So there is some movement on our request, and we regard that as a positive step." Calls to the USDA's public affairs office in Sacramento were not returned by press time for the March 26 issue of The Produce News.
"We have been in very close communication with the California Department of Food and Agriculture urging them to remain strong in their resolve and to have this jurisdictional issue cleared up," said Mr. Bellamore. "CDFA has assured us that they are taking it very seriously and they are seeking to reopen a dialogue with USDA about the risk presented by armored scale insects."
In response to Mr. Campbell's expression of surprise on the part of the Mexican avocado industry at CAC's actions, Mr. Bellamore said, "California avocado growers were incredulous when they learned that the first trucks entering California carried an invasive species that they did not have. It is the fear that they had expressed from the beginning of rulemaking on Mexican avocados, and it was realized virtually the first day Mexican avocados entered California. Those events occurred without so much as a telephone call from the Mexican industry to the California industry saying, 'Oh, we understand there is a problem here.'"
Jose Luis Obregon, executive director of the Hass Avocado Board, which coordinates generic promotion of Hass avocados in the United States for domestic and imported product, does not expect that a preliminary injunction, if it is granted, would be significantly disruptive to the marketplace.
Even though the California crop is down significantly this year, there is still enough California product to meet the needs of the California marketplace, he said. "Most of the [Mexican] fruit is handled by California handlers, so I am sure that the California crop will stay within the California borders, and they can just redirect their trucks that come from Mexico to supply the other markets. Even if something happens, there will be plenty of supplies to supply all of the California demand."
While that may be true for the California market as a whole, one avocado marketer in California who handles both domestic and imported fruit and who asked not to be identified said that he expects to see significant losses if an injunction against the entry of Mexican Hass is granted.
The commissioners agreed to follow three courses of action, according to the memo: to "continue to apply extreme pressure on all fronts" to resolve a "jurisdictional issue between the California Department of Food & Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture" arising out of differences between state and federal definitions of what constitutes an excludable pest; to introduce legislation at the state level "to reduce the risk of pest and disease infestations in avocados imported into California from countries with known phytosanitary problems; and to file a lawsuit against the USDA to suspend shipments of Mexican avocados into California."
CAC will "file a legal complaint asserting that the government's import protocol for Mexican avocados is defective. The complaint will be accompanied by a Motion for a Preliminary Injunction -- a request to the court that all shipments of Mexican avocados into California be halted because of the threat of imminent irreparable injury to California growers," the memo stated.
Regarding the first point, the memo noted that "USDA still has not officially responded to CDFA's request for modification of a cooperative agreement that would allow federal inspectors to turn scale-infested shipments over to CDFA for disposition."
Effective Feb. 1, the USDA allowed Mexican-grown Hass avocados to enter California for the first time since the 1920s under a strict protocol designed to assure that no exotic pests potentially harmful to California's avocado industry would be imported with the fruit.
As of Feb. 19, CDFA inspectors had rejected 11 of 44 loads of avocados crossing into California in interstate commerce due to detection of armored scale pests thought to be invasive. Subsequently, a CDFA spokesperson acknowledged that pest finds in 10 of the 11 loads had been misidentified and were actually a type of scale already in California.
More recently, armored scale insects were found by Los Angeles County agricultural inspectors on Mexican-grown Hass avocados on the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, according to a March 15 article in the North County Times. The fruit was taken off the market and fumigated.
One concern of both the CAC and the CDFA has been a disagreement between the state and USDA as to what constitutes an excludible pest. State inspectors check loads of fruit coming into California from other states and reject loads when they find species of scale insects not already established in California. However, state inspectors have no jurisdiction at international border crossings such as those near San Diego, and the USDA inspectors there allow fruit into the state even though it may contain pests that California law prohibits.
In a March 19 CAC memo, the commission urged "state regulators to stand firm in their resolve to reject shipments of Mexican avocados found to contain invasive species of armored scale. CDFA recently told CAC that it is seeking to 'reopen the discussion on USDA's 1985 Risk Assessment pertaining to armored scale.' According to CDFA sources, if USDA is unwilling to do so, the state agency will 'remain at loggerheads with USDA for awhile' as it continues to enforce state phytosanitary policy by rejecting shipments found to contain quarantine pests."
Ron Campbell, who represents APEAM, an association of avocado growers, packers and exporters in Michoacan, Mexico, and also MHAIA, the Mexican Avocado Importers Association, told The Produce News March 19, "We were caught completely off guard" by CAC's decision to seek an injunction against entry of Mexican Hass avocados into the state.
"We have been working very closely with the avocado commission for over two years now," Mr. Campbell said. "We had a very close working relationship with them. And in a matter of a few days, they turned away from all this good will and bridge building and fence mending. They turned the clocks back to 1996 [when Mexican avocados were first allowed into some Northeastern states]."
According to Mr. Campbell, the people at the California Avocado Commission have "known about these scales since avocados have been coming into the United States" and have never previously expressed an objection. "This scale insect was nothing to them until a few angry growers out there made them do a complete about-face on their position on it. Now all of a sudden it is a risk, where in the past it was nothing. They didn't even consider it to be anything."
The initial confusion over the identification of some of the scale insects found on Mexican fruit "leads me to believe that they don't really know what they have there, but they are taking action, they are erring on the side of caution by keeping this pest out," said Mr. Campbell. But "scales are common in agriculture. There is scale in commercial produce, and armored scale is a non-mobile pest that does not present a phytosanitary risk to agriculture. This is contrived. It is an effort to limit the supply of fruit in California, boost prices and to make money. It is more or less just the California Avocado Commission being populists for their industry. I don't believe they really believe it is a risk or they would have brought it up long before now."
Tom Bellamore, senior vice president and corporate counsel for CAC, told The Produce News that because of the pending litigation, he could not comment on whether the commission had expressed concern prior to Jan. 31 over the specific pests now in question.
However, after checking sources within his department, Steve Lyle, CDFA's director of public affairs, confirmed to The Produce News that the department's concern with regard to the scale pests "is a discussion with the USDA that we have been having for some time, significantly predating the February 1 shipment date of Hass avocados from Mexico and the detection of the scale pests of concern."
He said that it is "also worth noting that in response to our request that the USDA reconsider its position on the scale pest, the feds have committed to establishing a technical working group" to examine the issue. "So there is some movement on our request, and we regard that as a positive step." Calls to the USDA's public affairs office in Sacramento were not returned by press time for the March 26 issue of The Produce News.
"We have been in very close communication with the California Department of Food and Agriculture urging them to remain strong in their resolve and to have this jurisdictional issue cleared up," said Mr. Bellamore. "CDFA has assured us that they are taking it very seriously and they are seeking to reopen a dialogue with USDA about the risk presented by armored scale insects."
In response to Mr. Campbell's expression of surprise on the part of the Mexican avocado industry at CAC's actions, Mr. Bellamore said, "California avocado growers were incredulous when they learned that the first trucks entering California carried an invasive species that they did not have. It is the fear that they had expressed from the beginning of rulemaking on Mexican avocados, and it was realized virtually the first day Mexican avocados entered California. Those events occurred without so much as a telephone call from the Mexican industry to the California industry saying, 'Oh, we understand there is a problem here.'"
Jose Luis Obregon, executive director of the Hass Avocado Board, which coordinates generic promotion of Hass avocados in the United States for domestic and imported product, does not expect that a preliminary injunction, if it is granted, would be significantly disruptive to the marketplace.
Even though the California crop is down significantly this year, there is still enough California product to meet the needs of the California marketplace, he said. "Most of the [Mexican] fruit is handled by California handlers, so I am sure that the California crop will stay within the California borders, and they can just redirect their trucks that come from Mexico to supply the other markets. Even if something happens, there will be plenty of supplies to supply all of the California demand."
While that may be true for the California market as a whole, one avocado marketer in California who handles both domestic and imported fruit and who asked not to be identified said that he expects to see significant losses if an injunction against the entry of Mexican Hass is granted.
