Ain't no stopping them now

Mexican avocados are headed to California as of Feb. 1, and this article in a San Diego newspaper marks the occasion.

The piece notes the respect won by Mexican growers from their California counterparts, and also observes that marketers of Mexican hass have not come into the market with reckless abandon. They have their sights on growing demand.

On that note, I got an email recently from Washington attorney Dale McNiel, who had been representing some Mexican avocado handlers challenging the Hass promotion order.
McNiel said Jan. 23:

Today the District Court Judge, Louis Oberdorfer, who inherited the Hass avocado promotion program case from Gladys Kessler upon her retirement, granted final judgment for the government. Seven importers of Hass avocados had challenged the program on First Amendment constitutional grounds in 2002 on the basis of a Supreme Court decision against the constitutionality of the mushroom promotion program. In 2005, the Supreme Court switched its views and upheld the beef promotion program on the basis that beef advertising was "government speech" and immune from challenge. The Supreme Court had left open a narrow possibility of unconstitutional compelled speech if the advertising were attributed to objecting persons by the public. The plaintiffs in the Hass avocado cases had offered an internet survey, designed by a leading market survey firm and conducted by the leading online survey company, that showed around 40% of the public who saw a program advertisement thought that it was attributable to importers and specifically the seven companies which were plaintiffs. However, the judge concluded that the survey was not reliable and trustworthy evidence of attribution to justify finding the law unconstitutional. I think his opinion was rather poorly reasoned, but he has the final say on matters of evidence. The law allows the importers 60 days to file an appeal. The grounds for appeal would be that the legal theory requires establishing that the public attributes program ads to the objecting plaintiffs and that we should have won because we presented such evidence. By discrediting our evidence, the judge made the legal theory impossible of proof.




I talked with McNiel today, and he didn't rule out an appeal. At the same time, the legal challenges are significant and he acknowledged that the Jan. 23 ruling could well be the "last gasp" for this issue.


Given that Mexican hass will now have access to all 50 states for the first time ever, there appears to be no reason for Mexican growers, exporters and U.S. importers not to fully take part in demand building generic promotions.