Scramble On to Save Watermelon Crop : Growers Fretting as State Lab Workers Push Tests for All Fields

A scramble was on Tuesday to salvage California’s $25-million watermelon crop, as lab workers tested thousands of sample melons gathered from throughout the state for evidence of a pesticide believed responsible for a food poisoning epidemic.

Farmers fear millions of melons will rot on the vine before tests prove their crops are free of the chemical and picking resumes. Forty of them met Tuesday in Bakersfield with Clare Berryhill, head of the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

“There are a lot of fields that have got to go,” one farmer told Berryhill as they emerged from the private meeting. “They have to get harvested today, or we are going to have to kiss it goodby.”

Week of Testing

Berryhill said it would take a week to complete testing of all watermelon fields, but that individual growers would be allowed to market their fruit as soon as their patches were cleared. Two received permission to resume harvest Tuesday, and grocery officials were hopeful of restocking watermelons by the end of the week.

The testing was made necessary by an outbreak of watermelon poisoning that began last Wednesday. Fifteen more cases of illness attributed to contaminated melons were reported Tuesday, bringing to 281 the number of people in five Western states that health officials suspect were afflicted. Symptoms are nausea, cramps and vomiting. No one has died in the outbreak.

The epidemic has spawned a baffling environmental whodunit, with growers, state officials and the manufacturer of the pesticide aldicarb presenting greatly different versions of what caused the contamination.

Berryhill and officials of Union Carbide, the manufacturer of aldicarb, have said the illegal applications on watermelon fields had to be willful violations, and the agriculture director vowed Monday to identify the culprit growers and “nail them to the cross.”

Jay Ellenberger, product manager for aldicarb at the federal Environmental Protection Agency, said Tuesday in an interview that EPA officials, too, “smell the smoking gun, (that) being a misapplication of aldicarb.”

But some growers identified as producing tainted melons have suggested the contamination was the result of residual amounts of the pesticide left over in the soil from previous years, when the land was planted in crops other than watermelons.

And while Union Carbide has claimed the chemical decomposes too rapidly for this to have occurred, a scientist who has researched aldicarb appeared to add some credence to the farmers’ version Tuesday.

Noting that Union Carbide’s aldicarb product, marketed as Temik, has been linked in previous years to contamination of drinking water, Dr. Robert Metcalf said the company officials “haven’t been really correct about anything they’ve said about the use of aldicarb in recent years.”

Professional Background

Metcalf is a professor of entomology and environmental studies at the University of Illinois and a former member of an Environmental Protection Agency advisory panel.

He said in an interview that he conducted research in California in the 1960s that “showed that it (aldicarb) was very persistent in soils . . . (and) was very readily translocated from ground to the fruiting parts of plants.”

A Union Carbide spokeswoman responded that Metcalf “has not worked with this compound for many years.”

Aldicarb is a powerful toxin not allowed for use on watermelon fields because of the likelihood it would work its way into the fruit. After people began to fall ill last week, inspectors found evidence of the chemical in 23 Kern County watermelon patches owned by seven growers. Another 20 patches in four other San Joaquin Valley counties also showed minuscule traces of the pesticide.

In Kern County, coffee shops catering to farmers have been crackling with speculation about how the contamination might have occurred. Few farmers seem willing to accept Berryhill’s assertion that the pesticide was implanted into the soil by growers willing to violate restrictions.

“I won’t accept that our growers are applying Temik illegally,” said Daryl Arnold, president of the Western Growers Assn., who had organized the meeting with Berryhill. “We are not going to take the blame entirely.”

Next to Cotton Fields

Some farmers noted that many watermelon patches are next to cotton fields, on which Temik can legally be applied, and theorized that water tainted with the chemical might have seeped over to the melons.

Still others suggested that a single rogue grower might have illegally used the powerful chemical, accounting for the illnesses and high readings recorded by inspectors, but that other farmers whose crops showed traces of the chemical were victims of sloppy lab work.

“I’d stake my life on that 95% of them don’t use that stuff,” Jerry Smith, owner of Wheeler Ridge Aviation, a crop-dusting firm, said. “They could take one watermelon, cut it into 10 pieces, give it to 10 different labs, and get 10 different results.”

Berryhill, who has declined to reveal what evidence led to his strong statements about growers’ culpability, was asked what might have motivated the culprits. He said watermelon growers “have such a small choice of pesticides they are always looking for ones that are much more effective.”

Berryhill said tests of samples from each of California’s watermelon patches are necessary to ensure against additional illness and restore consumer confidence in the popular summertime fruit. He said it could take a week to complete the process, which will entail testing 3,500 sample melons.

Once fields are determined to be non-contaminated, county workers will place stickers on melons identifying them as edible. Only then can the fruit be marketed.

Required Declaration

Berryhill said farmers whose crops pass the tests would be required to declare they have not applied the aldicarb on their melon fields in the past 12 months, and those who were not truthful would face $100,000 fines for perjury.

“Those melons coming back from now on are going to be wholesome,” Berryhill said.

Most county agriculture commissioners in the valley were set to begin placing the green-and-white stickers on melons from cleared fields, but like the farmers were forced to wait for lab results.

“Approximately 250 acres of melons are ready for harvest right now,” said Jerry Prieto, deputy agricultural commissioner for Fresno County. “They’re declining on the vine every day we have to delay it.”

Retailers already have been ordered to destroy an estimated 1 million melons, and wholesalers are holding large numbers of additional melons as they await word from the state about whether they can be sold.

California melons have been banned for sale in California, Oregon, Alaska, Washington and Idaho--the five states reporting illnesses--as well as in Colorado, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri and British Columbia.

Buyers for grocery chains were poised to begin snapping up whatever melons were released for market.

“Our buyer is working right now to supply our stores with enough watermelons,” said Suzanne Dyer, a spokeswoman for Vons.

Price Increase

She said the wholesale price of melons was expected to increase because of the supply pinch, but was less certain how retail prices would be affected.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency for months has been studying the problem of aldicarb pollution of ground water, which the agency said has occurred in at least 10 states. Mike Branagan, manager of the study for the EPA, said the agency hopes in November to issue proposals which might involve additional restrictions on aldicarb use in certain soils.

According to the EPA, aldicarb has been found in ground water in California, New York, Wisconsin, Florida, Maine, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Virginia.

A Union Carbide official said more than 2,000 wells in six states have been polluted by Temik, including one well in California’s Del Norte County, where Temik was used by lily growers until ground water problems were detected in 1983.

Dr. Ray Neutra, the state’s chief epidemiologist, said the count of victims in the watermelon poisoning is “very rough,” based on conversations with county health directors and poison control centers.

Peter H. King reported from Los Angeles, Bob Baker from Bakersfield. David Holley, Myron Levin, Harry Nelson and Daniel M. Weintraub contributed to this article.