Growers Voice Medfly Concerns at Hearing

Plans to lift a federal ban on imports of Spanish clementines do not contain adequate safeguards to protect California crops from another outbreak of the devastating Mediterranean fruit fly, industry leaders and local growers warned Tuesday.

“Our history of fighting the medfly in California shows that the threats are real and the costs can be tremendous,” testified Bill Pauli, president of the California Farm Bureau Federation, the state’s largest farm organization, with more than 95,000 member families.

“This is not about blocking foreign products from entering the U.S.” Pauli said. “It’s about science over politics.”

Pauli’s comments echoed those of about a dozen farm leaders who spoke Tuesday in Oxnard, at the first of two U.S. Department of Agriculture public hearings this week. The second is scheduled Thursday in Lake Alfred, Fla.

At issue is a Department of Agriculture proposal to allow Spain to resume exportation to the U.S. of clementines--a seedless, easy-to-peel citrus, similar in shape and size to the tangerine.

Federal regulators in December halted Spanish imports of the seasonal fruit. The action was taken following the discovery of clementines infested with live medfly larvae in shipments sent to several states, including California.

Officials with the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service are proposing to resume the trade program, but with a host of new restrictions.

These include requiring medfly trapping six weeks in advance of shipments, strengthening port-of-entry inspections and imposing a two-day extension on the amount of time that clementines must be kept in cold storage en route from Spain to the U.S.

Sustained cold temperatures kill medfly larvae living in the pulp of the fruit, according to Department of Agriculture officials.

“We feel with all of these additional measures, the system approach should give us the needed security,” said Paul Gadh, an import specialist with the Agriculture Department.

But agriculture industry leaders say there is no evidence to prove that two extra days in cold storage--at temperatures between 32 and 36 degrees--is enough to ensure that no live medfly larvae enter the country.

And anything less is unacceptable, they said.

“The Mediterranean fruit fly is to the fresh fruit industry what hoof-and-mouth disease is to the livestock industry. It is potential devastation,” said Al Williams, chairman of the board for Sunkist Growers, a marketing cooperative of more than 6,000 citrus growers in California and Arizona.

Wearing buttons depicting a medfly covered with a red circle and slash, growers Tuesday argued that the new rule was hastily devised, based on a political desire to resume trade with Spain rather than protect California’s $27-billion agriculture industry.

“Spain is one of our best cooperators in the war against terrorism, and the U.S. government is eager to reward them for that,” Santa Paula grower Richard Pidduck said outside the hearing.

The medfly, considered one of the most threatening agriculture pests worldwide, attacks more than 250 types of fruits, vegetables and nuts, many grown in Southern California.

Slightly smaller than a common housefly, the adult female medfly lays eggs inside fruit by piercing its soft skin. The eggs hatch into maggots, which feed inside the fruit pulp. The insect’s life cycle is between 21 and 30 days.

California has battled more than a dozen medfly outbreaks since 1975, including a $100-million campaign in the early 1980s in the Santa Clara Valley. Growers said a widespread outbreak could lead to higher consumer prices, lost jobs, trade embargoes and reduced crop yields.

John Grether, who grows citrus and avocados in Las Posas Valley near Somis, remembers the Ventura County medfly outbreak of 1994. That eradication effort, which included a 16-mile quarantine, lasted 10 months and cost the local industry millions of dollars, he said.

“It was disruptive, it was expensive and it was frightening,” Grether said outside the hearing.

“That is history we don’t want to repeat.”