Growers Fear Lifting of Ban on Avocados From Mexico : Farming: Federal proposal raises concerns over possible new pests and price competition because of lower labor costs across the border.

With the fight against the Medfly still a recent, expensive memory, Ventura County avocado growers fear they may soon face new pest infestations if federal authorities lift a ban on Mexican avocados.

The move, part of the drive to lower trade barriers between the two countries, would allow Mexican Haas avocados into 19 northeastern states during the winter months.

Local growers say the influx of avocados could drastically cut the price their fruit commands. And though the imported fruit would not be allowed into California, growers doubt federal officials could keep the avocados, and any harmful pests they may carry, from crossing state lines.

“Those of us in Ventura County, including those who just went through the spraying in Camarillo, know the consequences of pests being released inadvertently,” said Al Guilin, whose Santa Paula-based Limoneira Co. grows more than 1,000 acres of the fruit. “We could be talking about a catastrophe in Ventura County.”

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which proposed the plan, will hold a two-day public hearing in Escondido later this month to explain the proposal and solicit feedback. They’ll get it, said Mark Affleck, president of the California Avocado Commission, which opposes lifting the ban. With news releases, a toll-free telephone hot line and planned transportation to the hearing, the commission hopes to mobilize growers from Ventura and the rest of Southern California against the proposal.

“Obviously, it’s a life and death situation with the pests,” Affleck said.

For more than 80 years, the government has barred Mexican avocados from the country, largely to keep out harmful insects. Under the USDA’s proposal, growers from the Michoacan state whose orchards have been certified pest-free would be allowed to ship their fruit to states from Maine to Illinois.

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Mexican growers have sought to lift the ban for years, claiming they can produce pest-free fruit, Affleck said. And Ventura County growers have voiced concerns about that prospect for years. But this is the first time that federal officials have issued a proposal that would allow Mexican avocado imports into the country.

Affleck attributed the government’s change of heart to the momentum toward free trade created by the North American Free Trade Agreement. “Without NAFTA there is no way this proposal would ever see the light of day,” Affleck said.

The proposal was first published in July, and must now go through a series of public hearings culminating in Escondido. The first hearing began Thursday in Washington, D.C., with representatives of the California Avocado Commission and the Mexican government each presenting scientific evidence in their favor, said Ed Curlett, a spokesman for the agriculture department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

After the hearings, people will still be able to submit written comments to the USDA through Oct. 16. The department has no timetable for deciding whether to adopt the plan, Curlett said.

The Avocado Commission has arranged buses to take growers to the Escondido hearing, scheduled to begin Aug. 30. That morning, one bus will stop at 7 a.m. at the Casitas Plaza Shopping Center in Carpinteria. It will proceed to Camarillo, picking up passengers at 8 a.m. at the Las Posas Road exit of the southbound Ventura Freeway.

The commission also has scheduled its own informational meeting Aug. 23 in Escondido and has set up a hot line that greets callers with the line, “New world order--same old pests.”

Prices, as well as pests, worry Ventura County growers. Mexican avocado growers have lower labor costs, fewer regulations and less need of irrigation than do American growers, said Hank Brokaw of Brokaw Nursery.

“They can do the job quite a bit cheaper than we can,” he said.

The price difference, growers say, could drive some out of the business. It would also provide a powerful incentive for brokers to bring the Mexican avocados into states, such as California, where the fruit would still officially be banned.

That illicit movement between states lies behind local growers’ infestation fears. According to the Avocado Commission, fruit arriving from Mexico could harbor a number of dangerous insects, including the avocado seed weevil, the stem borer and the Mexican fruit fly.

Bob Tobias, operations manager at Mission Produce, understands the cost of an infestation. During Ventura County’s recent fight against the Mediterranean fruit fly, some of the growers that pack their avocados with Mission were within the zone sprayed with the pesticide malathion.

His company helped growers fumigate about 3 million pounds of the fruit, costing about $125,000. Add to that the price exacted by marketing and shipping problems caused by the agricultural quarantine. Tobias said he still doesn’t know the episode’s full cost.

Now the local agricultural community is battling another pest--a kind of mite that causes trees to lose their leaves--that may have come from Mexico, Tobias said.

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The idea of restricting Mexican avocados to the Northeast, he said, sounds good but would be virtually unenforceable. The agriculture department’s manpower, he said, is far too limited to control the fruit’s movement through the open borders between states. Brokaw agreed.

“There is no way they can discipline that interstate commerce very well,” he said. “You just can’t do that.”

Federal agriculture officials say they can. The Mexican fruit would be allowed only through specific entry points with paperwork letting the authorities know which state it was bound for and when it should arrive. Federal inspectors would examine the sealed containers of fruit as they arrived in the country and when they reached their destination states.

Dealers found with the fruit outside the 19 approved states would pay a fine that Curlett estimated in the “tens of thousands of dollars” and would lose their right to import from any country.

The plan also includes measures to keep out insect-bearing fruit. The Mexican avocados would come from areas with insect trapping monitored by federal workers and be shipped only by plane or by refrigerated truck or rail car. Shipments would be allowed only from November to February in hopes that the cold would kill any bugs that manage to get through.

“We believe that the avocados will be pest-free,” Curlett said.

Several Ventura County growers say they aren’t convinced and will take their concerns to the hearing.

Tobias, who plans to testify at the hearing, said some growers may be reluctant to join another fight so soon after the Medfly quarantine, lifted just weeks ago.