Widely reported rumours of an impending federal quarantine on citrus exports from Florida in a bid to prevent the international spread of citrus canker are unfounded, one industry leader told FPJ.
“There is nothing pending with regard to quarantine, I have checked with authorities and have not heard of anything,” said Doug Bournique, executive vice-president of the Indian River Citrus League. “There have been articles written but that is pure speculation. We don’t expect any quarantine and even if there were, we would still be able to ship to all our trading partners. It would just mean tougher inspection. We already have the most inspected fruit on earth: in the grove, the packhouse at the port. And right now, because of how tough our environmental laws are and because of the disease problems, we are undergoing constant inspections. We have surveyors in the groves all the time and this citrus is looked a numerous times before it is ever shipped.”
Bournique said any disruption to shipping schedules in the event of any quarantine would be extremely unlikely, especially to the UK.
A high-cost citrus canker eradication programme over recent years in the state has failed to control the disease which has spread due to lawsuits brought by homeowners over destruction of their domestic trees and hurricane activity in the state.
Florida’s hurricane-hit 2005-06 grapefruit campaign is drawing to a close leaving producers to hope that the hurricane season this year which runs from June to November will be kind. Local naturalists point to sea-turtle behaviour this year which has seen the creatures lay their eggs much lower than in the past two years when hurricane activity was high. They say this may be an indication that the storm season will not be so damaging.
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