The California Avocado Commission has expressed frustration over the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s lack of communication about changes in avocado import inspection.
CAC made public Nov. 7 its complaint to Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and other USDA officials asking why the agency did not conduct an updated pest survey before APHIS released a risk management document authorizing imports of avocados from Guatemala.
The document states that a "physical, biological census (a survey whose intent is to discover a diverse range of taxa [a group of organisms] in a given geographic area) is not part of our methodology of writing pest risk assessments." It adds that the assessment is informed by port-of-entry pest interception data, information from the Guatemalan government and "current scientific literature" on pests known to feed on the Hass avocado in Guatemala.
"APHIS is unaware of, and the commenter does not mention, any scientific literature documenting any new pests in Guatemala since the pest risk assessment was developed in 2022," according to the APHIS risk management document.
“I'm not trying to get speculative and down the road, but we see the writing on the wall,” CAC Chair Jason Cole said. “If [they] let Guatemala in with no USDA on-the-ground presence, Mexico is going to demand the same treatment. It's only a matter of time before [USDA is] completely gone, except for the border.”
CAC decided to send its own pest scout to Guatemala in early October after finding out the USDA is no longer conducting in-person inspections of Mexican avocado groves, which the agency explained was due to increasing safety risks for USDA personnel. But USDA allegedly told CAC that it waited too long to send a scout since the change was announced in 2022.
Suzanne Bond, APHIS assistant director of public affairs, wrote to Agri-Pulse that “APHIS made this decision after careful analysis and thorough research,” concluding that any plant pest risk can be avoided through a systems approach and only allowing the import of commercial fruit.
She added that APHIS requires a phytosanitary certificate for all consignments, which are also subject to U.S. Customs and Border Protection inspection.
Ken Melban, CAC vice president of industry affairs and operations, told Agri-Pulse that the commission had been waiting for USDA to update its pest risk management document with comments the commission submitted as part of the Federal Register comment process.
He said that the entire import program “needs to have a conversation."
“You don't diminish the inspection oversight to remove potential safety risks for the inspectors,” Melban said, though he acknowledged the importance of inspectors' security. “That's increasing safety risk for us, for invasive pests.”
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Cole said he was dissatisfied with the pest risk assessment the agency conducted, adding that most of the research the agency quotes was funded by CAC’s original pest scouting, which, the commission wrote to the agency, was from a survey conducted in 2006 to 2007.
Melban and Cole sent a letter on Sept. 23 to Vilsack and, at the agency’s request, met with APHIS Plant Protection and Quarantine Deputy Director Mark Davidson and APHIS Senior Policy Advisor Ethan Holmes on Oct. 11.
During the meeting, Melban said the agency mainly just informed them that the Guatemala import authorization was going to happen.
CAC sent a follow-up email to Davidson after they heard the agency had reduced staff inspection hours in Mexican packing facilities, which the agency said was not going to change. CAC was also informed that some packing facilities had been shut down following pest findings.
Melban asked for “all information and reporting from the USDA Mexico operational work plan” and any inspections conducted since Aug. 1 with details on pest findings and shutdowns.
“We have not made any additional changes to the [operational work plan] since we last spoke and remain in the packing houses,” Davidson responded via email Nov. 15. “We are operating during daylight hours and have been for a while as part of the security mitigations. Avocados for export to the U.S. can only be processed while we are on-site and this remains unchanged.”
Davidson added that they are “evaluating requests from the packing houses if additional hours could be accommodated” and that, “since mid-October, we have had some findings of stem weevils and, as required, the orchards and involved packing houses have been suspended from the program while investigations occur.”
According to a 2021 report from California Department of Food and Agriculture and California Department of Parks and Recreation, the stem-boring weevil was approved as a biological control agent in Canada and parts of the U.S., but previously hadn't been used in California for fear of harming a native plant species. However, they've been used successfully in southern California to combat a concentrated invasive plant.
Davidson wrote back to Melban that CAC would be getting more information via a formal response. USDA has not responded to a request from Agri-Pulse for comment.
Both Cole and Melban expressed hope that the next administration will bring changes to USDA leadership that will increase transparency and communication with the commission.
“I don't believe it's gonna work, and if the pests they have down there get here – it's gonna absolutely wreck us,” Cole said.
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