If Florida and California were sovereign states, they might be at the WTO with this:
Last week, the Florida Department of Agriculture issued a new regulation requiring all citrus fruit shipped from California to Florida to be inspected, fumigated and certified free of a fungal disease known as Septoria spot.
Otherwise, no California fruit will be allowed in Florida.
"Florida doesn't have it, and frankly, we would like to keep it that way," said Liz Compton, a spokeswoman for the state agriculture department.
"We are not saying we won't take their fruit, we are saying they have to follow certain measures. We don't understand why that is so onerous."
For California's part, growers there say the state's move is all about retaliation.
The federal government is not allowing Florida growers to ship citrus to other citrus-growing states because canker is epidemic here.
"We're not shipping fruit to Florida," said Joel Nelsen, president of California Citrus Mutual. "If you start subjecting yourself to those arbitrary rules that anybody puts in place you will have arbitrary rules for each state and country."
...
California citrus interests had asked for Florida fruit to be restricted from all states except northern states east of the Mississippi.
