Fruit Marketing Orders Upheld

Despite challenges from some growers, a federal judge in Fresno has affirmed the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s authority to adopt and enforce marketing orders for peaches, nectarines and pears.

The decision, made by U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger, came in a 6-year-old case brought by California growers Frank Elliott and John Kashiki. They said marketing orders forced them to dump more than $500,000 worth of good fruit in 1986 alone.

Wanger upheld the previous decision of a USDA official who overturned a 1989 decision of Dorothea Baker, a USDA administrative law judge. Baker had declared marketing orders--which set size standards and volume controls on tree fruit--to be arbitrary and illegal.

The case contrasts with the course of a dispute over California citrus marketing orders. In that case, a federal judge in Washington last month upheld the USDA’s decision to lift the orders covering navel oranges and lemons.

The citrus marketing orders are more restrictive than those on most other commodities, because they set week-by-week controls on how much fruit each packer may ship.

Marketing orders on tree fruit stirred controversy again last summer, when 500 million pieces of fruit were slated to be dumped because the fruit was too small to meet size standards. Businesses donated trucks and drivers to pick up some of the undersized fruit and deliver it to charitable programs.