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Ripe Mess : Quarantine Dooms a Mountain of Melons

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Times Staff Writer

While health department employees were busy Tuesday completing calls to an estimated 2,700 Orange County restaurants to ensure that watermelons are off their menus, warehousemen sat and watched tons of the quarantined pink-and-green fruit rot in the summer heat.

“I got a lot of watermelons, if you want them,” said Joe Ingardia, co-owner of Ingardia Bros. Produce Inc. in Costa Mesa. “I got about three tons, $600 worth, and I really don’t know what to do about them.”

Since last Thursday--when state agriculture officials quarantined all watermelons because of an epidemic of food poisoning caused by the pesticide aldicarb--Ingardia and his fellow Orange County produce distributors have been caught in a fruity Catch-22.

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They had stocked up on watermelons for the Fourth of July holiday, the biggest watermelon day of the year, and were stuck with their unsold fruit on Thursday, when the state Food and Agriculture Department ordered it all taken off store shelves.

Many have kept their melons in their warehouses, hoping that officials can test them for traces of aldicarb, a powerful pesticide that is not authorized for use on watermelons, and let them sell the untainted fruit.

Aging Fruit

But Frank Parsons, deputy commissioner for the Orange County Department of Agriculture, said Tuesday that the aging fruit in local warehouses cannot be inspected and sold.

“We cannot inspect melons that have already been picked and shipped,” Parsons said in a telephone interview. “If they (warehousemen) could identify the grower and the field, then maybe. . . . But we’re not finding that to be the case. The melons lose their identity. They are purchased from various growers and brokers.”

As a result, the warehouse owners have been stuck holding the watermelons--and losing time, money and customers.

“I got three bins in the back,” Ingardia said. “The rest went to the dump. We dumped some this morning, some yesterday. With this heat, they get rotten right away and stink, so I have to throw them away.”

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Rich Penjoyan, owner of Penjoyan Produce, said he is angry at state and local officials because destroying all watermelons “just doesn’t make sense.” Penjoyan has between 8,000 and 10,000 pounds--$1,000 worth--of the fruit in his Costa Mesa warehouse, and all he has been able to do is “just look at them.”

“Our watermelon have been good,” Penjoyan said. “We’ve been taking them home and eating them. . . . If your load is good and you’re told to dump them, it’s almost vindictive. I don’t mind dumping contaminated fruit, but, my God, when it’s good, it seems silly.”

Occasional Humor

But the watermelon debacle has not been all heartache for the warehouseman. His anger has been relieved by occasional flashes of humor: “We’ve had people call and say they’ve eaten half of a watermelon and ask if it’s safe to eat the other half.”

Penjoyan and Ingardia’s problems are small compared with those felt at the Irvine produce warehouses of Lucky Stores Inc. The warehouse has been designated as the watermelon disposal site for the supermarket chain’s 180 Southern California stores, a Lucky spokeswoman said, and an as-yet-unknown number of useless melons are rolling in.

“We’ve rented several dumpsters and an outside company to haul the dumpsters to an approved site,” said spokeswoman Judy Decker. Melon disposal “is becoming a normal part of business,” she said.

In the past week, 281 cases of possible aldicarb poisoning have surfaced in five Western states, health officials said, although no one has died from eating tainted watermelon. As of Tuesday, 27 “alleged” poisoning cases have been found in Orange County, said Bob Merryman, director of environmental health for the county Health Care Agency.

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The symptoms of aldicarb poisoning are nausea, cramps and vomiting that begin within two hours after contaminated fruit is eaten. The symptoms do not last more than 24 hours.

Cooperative Effort

According to Merryman, clearing Orange County of watermelons has been a cooperative effort involving his department, the federal Food and Drug Administration, the state Food and Agriculture Department and the county Department of Agriculture.

While the FDA is responsible for all watermelons still en route from distributors to retailers, he said, the state agriculture department is testing watermelons in the fields and distributing “Passed California Agriculture” stickers to be placed on approved fruit.

The county Agriculture Department is responsible for clearing markets of the fruit, Merryman said, and his own department spent last Friday and Tuesday contacting about 2,700 Orange County restaurants to tell them to destroy all of the melons in their possession.

“On Friday we found some restaurants selling watermelon,” Merryman said. But as the health department workers wound up their restaurant calls Tuesday, he said, all restaurants contacted were clear of the fruit.

State agriculture officials say they have found aldicarb-tainted melons in 40 watermelon patches in five San Joaquin Valley counties. Although an estimated 33,000 acres of Orange County land are cultivated, only 20 to 30 acres are planted with watermelons, Parsons said.

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“Everything (all of the watermelon fields) we’ve found is two to three weeks off from picking,” Parsons said, “so we’re in a comfortable position.” When the Orange County fields are nearly ready for harvesting, watermelon samples will be taken from them and sent to state agriculture department labs to analyze for aldicarb, he said. If no aldicarb is found on the local melons, they will be issued the green-and-white stickers and sold.

Awaiting Approved Melons

As yet, no approved melons have surfaced in local markets. Health and agriculture department officials said they expect the fruit to be available by the end of the week.

Although growers statewide say they are losing fruit that is ready to sell while they wait for this bill-of-health process to be streamlined, “we have lots of time here in Orange County to iron the process out,” Parsons said.

Okuma Brothers, owned by Gary Okuma and his two uncles, has the only large watermelon patch in the county, Parsons said. The 60-acre San Juan Capistrano farm has 12 acres of watermelons, and Okuma said he has never used aldicarb on the land, which has been owned by his family for nearly 20 years.

“We’re vegetable growers,” Okuma said, “and for any of the crops that we have, it (aldicarb) is not registered for use.”

The Okuma farm, located on a lonely stretch of Ortega Highway, should produce between 240 and 300 tons of watermelons. Okuma said he is optimistic that his produce will be cleared for sale by agriculture officials and that customers will not be too afraid of the threat of food poisoning to buy it.

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“We feel that the state can put the appropriate stamp on it, and the consumers will trust that,” he said. “So we don’t think we’ll feel any immediate effects.”

But not all Orange County growers and distributors are so sure. Penjoyan said he thinks the sticker system will be ineffective. “What’s to stop a wholesaler from stickering old fruit or having stickers printed up?” he asked.

And Ingardia insists that he’s not going to sell any more watermelons this season--even if they have the state agriculture department’s seal of approval. “I wouldn’t trust them,” he said. “To sell a watermelon and lose a customer isn’t worth it.”

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