On February 11, 2015, the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s (CDFA) Plant Health and Pest Prevention Services office issued an advisory to all county agriculture commissioners (CACs) for Huanglongbing (HLB) infected citrus.  Pest Exclusionary Advisory No. 07-2015 notifies the CACs that commercially produced citrus fruit will no longer be tested for HLB by CDFA’s Plant Pest Diagnostics Center and should not be rejected under 7 CFR 301.76.  

The exemption of commercially-produced citrus fruit is based on a risk assessment of pathways for the transmission of HLB and Asian Citrus Psyllid (ACP).  The Federal Domestic Quarantine for Citrus Greening and Asian Citrus Psyllid still applies to non-commercial fruit as they have not been properly cleaned and ACP are known to hitchhike on the fruit. For this reason, only commercially-cleaned fruit (even when it is HLB positive) is exempt.