US suspends Mexican avocado imports on eve of Tremendous Bowl

MEXICO CITY – Mexico has acknowledged that the U.S. authorities has suspended all imports of Mexican avocados after a U.S. plant security inspector in Mexico obtained a menace.

The shock suspension was confirmed late Saturday on the eve of the Tremendous Bowl, the largest gross sales alternative of the yr for Mexican avocado growers.

Avocado exports are the newest sufferer of the drug cartel turf battles and extorsion of avocado growers within the western state of Michoacan, the one state in Mexico totally approved to export to the U.S. market.

The U.S. authorities suspended all imports of Mexican avocados “till additional discover” after a U.S. plant security inspector in Mexico obtained a threatening message, Mexico’s Agriculture Division stated in an announcement.

“U.S. well being authorities … made the choice after one in every of their officers, who was finishing up inspections in Uruapan, Michoacan, obtained a threatening message on his official cellphone,” the division wrote.

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As a result of the USA additionally grows avocados, U.S. inspectors work in Mexico to make sure exported avocados don’t carry illnesses that might harm U.S. crops.

It was solely in 1997 that the U.S. lifted a ban on Mexican avocados that had been in place since 1914 to forestall a variety of weevils, scabs and pests from coming into U.S. orchards.

The inspectors work for the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Well being Inspection Companies.

It’s not the primary time that the violence in Michoacan — the place the Jalisco cartel is combating turf wars towards a group of native gangs generally known as the United Cartels — has threatened avocados, the state’s most profitable crop.

After a earlier incident in 2019, the USDA had warned in regards to the doable penalties of attacking or threatening U.S. inspectors.

In August 2019, a U.S. Division of Agriculture crew of inspectors was “immediately threatened” in Ziracuaretiro, a city simply west of Uruapan. Whereas the company didn’t specify what occurred, native authorities say a gang robbed the truck the inspectors had been touring in at gunpoint.

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The USDA wrote in a letter on the time that, “For future conditions that end in a safety breach, or display an imminent bodily menace to the well-being of APHIS personnel, we’ll instantly droop program actions.”

Many avocado growers in Michoacan say drug gangs threaten them or their members of the family with kidnapping or dying until they pay safety cash, typically amounting to 1000’s of {dollars} per acre.

On September 30, 2020, a Mexican worker of APHIS was killed close to the northern border metropolis of Tijuana.

Mexican prosecutors stated Edgar Flores Santos was killed by drug traffickers who might have mistaken him for a policeman and a suspect was arrested. The U.S. State Division stated investigations “concluded this unlucky incident was a case of Mr. Flores being within the fallacious place on the fallacious time.”