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Brazilians Say No International Trade Dispute Over Orange Juice

Ledger – February 18, 2012

HAINES CITY | The Brazilian processors’ organization said Friday it will not cause an international trade fight over its dispute with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the testing of orange juice for carbendazim, a banned fungicide.

“We have plenty of arguments to go (before) the WTO (World Trade Organization), but our associates decided to not to do it,” said Christian Lohbauer, chief executive of the Brazilian Association of Citrus Exporters, or CitrusBR, in a Friday morning email to The Ledger. “We will work hard to take carbendazim out of Brazilian production and export the best frozen concentrated orange juice in the world to the USA as soon as possible.”

The FDA has been testing all OJ imports to the U.S. since Jan. 4 after the two largest U.S. juice retailers — Tropicana Products Inc. in Bradenton, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, and the Coca-Cola Co., which owns the Minute Maid brand — reported finding traces of carbendazim in its OJ products.

Those products used blends of orange juice from Florida, where the fungicide is illegal under U.S. law, and Brazil, where carbendazim is legal and widely used.

As of Thursday, the FDA has barred from entry 24 imported OJ shipments, half from Brazil. Ten shipments came as frozen concentrated OJ and the others as single-strength juice.

Lohbauer and representatives from the Juice Products Association, an industry trade group based in Washington, D.C., and the Florida Citrus Processors Association in Lakeland met with FDA officials Jan. 26 to press for a change in testing standards concerning frozen concentrated OJ imports.

The FDA rejected the request in a letter released Thursday.

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