5 Counties Show Pesticide Misuse in Tainted Melons

California’s top agriculture official said today that he believes the watermelon poisonings in California and surrounding states were caused by deliberate misuse of chemicals, not by pesticide residue from past crops. He also raised the number of counties affected to five.

“I’m not assuming it was a carry-over. I’m assuming it was an illegal application,” state Food and Agriculture Director Clare Berryhill said, adding that his department had received information from informants to that effect.

He also said that 40 fields, owned by 15 growers in the five counties, showed traces of illegal aldicarb poisoning. He said that the majority of the fields were in Kern County but that others were detected in Fresno, Tulare, Madera and Merced counties.

High Levels Found

Berryhill said a sampling program over the weekend tested two melons from each of 175 fields. He said there were high levels of aldicarb in 23 fields and traces in 17 others.

Berryhill also announced the start today of a sticker program to certify new melons that have cleared state field tests. He said melons with stickers could be in markets beginning as early as Tuesday.

He said that before any melons will be certified for sale, inspectors will test 20 melons from the field.

Berryhill revised downward from 10 million to 1 million the number of watermelons that will have to be destroyed by retailers and wholesalers. (Earlier estimate, Page 5.)

Normal Prices Predicted

He said at a press conference that there are 20 million melons to be harvested from California fields. And he predicted that the poisoned melons will have little or no effect on prices to consumers because the certified melons will flood the market and bring prices down.

Earlier, state officials announced that they had decided to destroy all watermelons at the retail level because part of the crop was found to contain aldicarb, a toxic pesticide linked to illnesses in four Western states and Canada.