According to a report released Tuesday by the California Avocado Commission (CAC), a 2024 Biden administration decision that removed U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors from Mexican orchards may put state-grown avocados in grave danger.
“This move, made in response to cartel violence, shifted critical U.S. agricultural oversight to foreign control, undermining decades of bipartisan efforts to protect U.S. agriculture,” the CAC stated in a press release.
In 1997, CAC officials and their federal counterparts negotiated an agreement with the Mexican government that permitted the importation of fresh Hass avocados into the United States, according to the report, “The Growing Threat to California Avocados: Why USDA Must Reinstate Inspection Protocols in Mexico.”
A prohibition that had been in effect since 1914 to keep a variety of pests out of American orchards was lifted by the agreement.
The report claims that USDA made the decision to withdraw its physical presence from Mexican avocado orchards in 2024 without consulting American avocado growers, notifying Congress, or making a public announcement.
According to the CAC, they actually found out about the ruling—which they describe as “a breach of [the 1997] agreement”—through international media.
“This system worked for nearly three decades…[and] functioned with exceptional effectiveness, keeping invasive pests like seed weevils and fruit-boring moths out of California [while] maintaining the state’s pristine pest-free certification,” according to the report. “With no need for chemical interventions against these exotic pests, growers benefited from lower production costs, clean environmental compliance and the ability to export to countries with strict phytosanitary barriers.”
“Mexican inspections alone cannot be trusted to meet the phytosanitary standards the U.S. has long required,” the report added “As a result, fruit carrying dangerous pests is now being certified and shipped with reduced oversight, increasing the probability of pest introduction into California’s avocado-growing regions.”
Since the pests have never taken root in California (which CAC attributes to the USDA’s nearly three decades of stringent pre-export enforcement), the state’s avocado industry, a “$1.5 billion economic engine” that sustains over 3,000 family-owned farms, is “fundamentally different” from its international rivals due to its hygiene regulations.
According to the report, California is one of the last significant avocado-producing states in the world to be free of the two main pests that affect the crop, fruit-feeding moths and avocado seed weevils.
This allows local growers to prosper with “minimal chemical intervention, high export viability, and strong consumer confidence.”
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“If [these pests] gain a foothold in California orchards, the result would be devastating – biologically, economically and environmentally,” according to the report.
Agriculture officials believe the pests may have already begun entering California; the CAC report notes that more than 150 pest interceptions were reported between Oct. 30, 2024, and Mar. 11, 2025, since inspectors were removed.
According to USDA data referenced in the report, no pests were intercepted in Mexican warehouses between January 1 and October 17, 2024.
According to the CAC, restoring inspection procedures in Mexico in accordance with the 1997 agreement is the primary way to address the issue.
Particularly in high-risk areas like the Mexican state of Michoacán, where the majority of avocados are grown, CAC advises that security forces be sent out and inspectors be positioned in secure convoys in order to ensure inspector safety.
Furthermore, CAC wants the Trump administration to take direct action to guarantee that “criminal cartels [do not] dictate the terms of our food safety” and to have the authority to halt Mexican imports in the event that requirements are not fulfilled. Eighty percent of Mexico’s avocado imports end up in the United States, the report claims.
Finally, the CAC seeks to raise public awareness of the issue as a national security issue rather than merely an agricultural one.
“The threat facing California’s avocado industry is not theoretical, it is happening now. Since the withdrawal of USDA inspectors from Mexico in late 2024, dangerous avocado seed pests have been repeatedly detected in Mexican orchards and packinghouses,” the report concludes. “These pests, long excluded by strict inspection protocols, now pose a growing risk of crossing into California’s pest-free growing regions…Once established, they cannot be eradicated, [and] the consequences would be severe: billions in economic losses, the collapse of generational family farms, and the loss of one of America’s most successful, clean, and sustainable agricultural commodities.”
“This crisis was preventable,” the report’s conclusion continues. “It is still reversible.”
