..."While pretty much anyone can grow tart cherries, no one markets a tart cherry in this country without CIAB permission.
"[T]he tart cherry industry is told by the U.S. government how much of their product they can put on the market," writes journalist Ron French, in the aforementioned great expose on the tart cherry industry for Michigan's Bridge magazine earlier this week. The CIAB, French notes, controls the tart cherry market by mandating "the percentage of the tart cherry crop that can be sold."
The CIAB has the force of federal law behind it.
"The CIAB is authorized under Federal law, and it is considered an 'instrumentality' of the United States Department of Agriculture," declares the board's website. "Therefore, it is the Secretary of Agriculture who oversees the operations of the CIAB and under whose aegis the order operates."
The board's role, it notes, is to make sure "the annual supply of tart cherries [matches] the demand for tart cherries."...
