US suspends avocado shipments from gang violence-torn Mexican state after threat to health official

The US has temporarily halted avocado shipments from a violence-ridden Mexican state after an American health inspector was threatened, Mexico‘s agriculture ministry said Saturday.

The abrupt suspension of the key guacamole ingredient – which came a day ahead of this year’s Super Bowl – came after a health official received a threatening call to his cell phone, the  Secretariat of Agriculture and Rural Development said in a statement.

The health worker had been carrying out an inspection in Uruapan, a city in Michoacán, a gang-plagued region that’s among Mexico’s deadliest states. It has for decades been used as a drug-trafficking hub and the situation has only worsened amid frequent armed struggles for power between rival cartels. 

Health officials did not disclose the specific nature of the threat, but it was serious enough to pause imports pending the results of an investigation by the US Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and and Department of Agriculture, the statement said.

In the past six weeks, Michoacán have exported more than 135 thousand tons of avocados to the US, the Mexican government said. The state is the world’s largest avocado exporter.

Michoacán growers in 2019 began taking up arms to protect themselves against thieves and drug cartels robbing them of their ‘green gold,’ using AR-15 rifles to defend themselves against deadly cartels

The US government put a pause on avocado imports from Michoacán state after one of its health inspectors received a threat via cell phone

Mexican drug cartel members have been for years threatening members of the lucrative avocado industry.

Michoacán growers in 2019 began taking up arms to protect themselves against thieves and drug cartels robbing them of their ‘green gold,’ using AR-15 rifles to defend themselves against deadly cartels.

Soaring US consumption has lifted the region out of poverty in the past decade, with Mexico in 2020 exporting more than $2.7billion US of the fruit, according to Statista.  

But the cash flow has also brought growing rates of extortion, kidnapping, and avocado theft.

The situation has become so dangerous that hundreds of avocado growers have formed a self-defense group called Pueblos Unidos to protect their fields. 

A a bullet hole is pictured on the window of a house, in El Aguaje, Michoacan in Mexico, on February 9, 2022, a region that’s become overwhelmed by drug violence

It isn’t the first time the US Department of Agriculture’s officials have been threatened.

In August 2019, a team of inspectors were ‘directly threatened’ in Ziracuaretiro, a town just west of Uruapan in Michoacan. While the agency didn’t specify what happened, local authorities said a gang robbed the truck the inspectors were traveling in at gunpoint.

 The US lifted a ban on Mexican avocados in 1997, decades after the ban was implemented in 1914 to prevent weevils, scabs and pests from entering U.S. orchards. 

The dangerous situation in gang-controlled Michoacán was again highlighted in January, when footage showed drug cartels using drones to drop explosives onto inhabitants of a Tepalcatepec forest.

It was the latest demonstration of unchecked violence in the region as the drones, controlled by the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, rained down explosives on the shacks.

Footage from the attack emerged just weeks after the nearby city of Chinicuila in Michoacan reported that roughly half of its population fled, many illegally into the US, to escape the cartel’s violence.