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Investigators Comb Melon Fields for Aldicarb Traces

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Times Staff Writers

Teams of state and federal investigators were at work in Bakersfield on Wednesday hunting for hard evidence that one or more Kern County farmers deliberately and illegally applied a particular pesticide to their watermelon crops and spawned a five-state food poisoning epidemic.

“They’re not easy kinds of cases to prove,” Jim Wells, chief of pesticide enforcement for the state Department of Food and Agriculture, said in an interview.

Wells said his five investigators, joined by an equal number from the federal Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture, will take soil samples from suspected farms, interview neighboring farmers and other potential witnesses and follow a paper trail of pesticide transactions.

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He said it could take several weeks to complete the investigation, with the greatest difficulty being development of proof that melons were contaminated as a result of deliberate violations by the farmers of restrictions on the pesticide aldicarb.

Such a violation could be prosecuted as a criminal misdemeanor, and state officials have promised to prosecute any culpable growers to the fullest extent. State agriculture officials have indicated that they were contemplating a request to the Legislature that penalties be made tougher in the future.

“We will use the full resources available to prosecute any wrongdoing,” Gov. George Deukmejian said Wednesday in Los Angeles. In his first comments on the watermelon tainting, the governor also said he is pleased with the performances of state agencies in attacking the outbreak.

Although watermelons, a $25-million crop in this state, are not a large part of California’s $13.6-billion agriculture industry, the melon tainting has raised some larger questions about the safety of food grown on lands where pesticides are considered by farmers an indispensable ally.

After the epidemic surfaced last Thursday, no watermelons were allowed to be sold, and the harvest was shut down in its peak season. Since then, state lab workers have concentrated on testing samples from patches not suspected of contamination, and by Wednesday 31 fields had been cleared and the first melons were bound for market.

“It was just my luck, I guess,” said Ralph Fanucchi, one of the first to have his fields cleared.

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At 8 a.m., farmhands were picking his 20-acre patch near Bakersfield. The crop was then moved to a trucking distribution point where each piece received a special stamp clearing it for consumption.

Officials expect all testing to be completed within a week. Some melons began appearing on shelves late Wednesday. Only melons bearing a green-and-white sticker that says “Passed California Agriculture” can be sold. The sticker means that the melons come from a field free of the pesticide aldicarb.

California melons were recalled in 10 states nationwide and parts of Canada after consumers of the fruit began to fall violently ill. No one has died in the outbreak, but health officers, using rough calculations, estimate that as many as 280 people were stricken by aldicarb poisoning after eating California watermelons.

Inspectors initially said traces of aldicarb--banned for use on watermelons but permissible for several other crops, including cotton and potatoes--were discovered in the fields of four Kern County farmers. Those farmers were identified publicly by state officials.

On Monday, the fifth day of the episode, the head of the state Department of Food and Agriculture said seven growers, all in Kern County, appeared to be responsible for the contamination. The official, Clare Berryhill, added that it was his belief based on lab results and “industry informants” that the misapplication of the pesticide was intentional. He pledged to find the culprits.

On Wednesday, however, Wells and others confirmed that the initial test results used to identify one of the original four suspected growers had been found to be in error.

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The farmer, Don Andrews, who farms thousands of acres in Kern County, said, “We’re very distressed that the state released our name. The state has certainly injured our name. We are concerned that the state initially may not have been using the right testing procedures.”

Other farmers named have said they had not used the pesticide on watermelon crops, and they theorized that residual amounts of the chemical--left over from applications in previous years on approved crops planted in the same fields--were responsible for the outbreak. The maker of the pesticide, Union Carbide, has said it is not possible for the aldicarb to stay in the soil for as long as the farmers contend that it must have.

Wells said he would not dismiss the farmers’ theory completely but added that he doubts it will hold up.

“I don’t believe the amounts (of aldicarb) being picked up from the melons could have been legal applications that turned out to be residuals in the soil.”

One theory being explored by state officials is that farmers had managed to apply the product, marketed as Temik, on watermelons for years without any traceable effect.

Last year, however, according to department spokeswoman Jan Wessell, Union Carbide changed the product, increasing its strength by 50%.

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If growers were unaware of the strength increase and did not reduce their applications accordingly, it could have increased toxicity to the point where illnesses not traceable previously to the melons now were more clearly a result of consumption of the fruit.

“If there were illegal applications of this,” Wessell said, “the growers who were illegally using it might likely have applied it as they did in previous years. And so they now have got a stronger and higher amount, and it’s showing when people eat a melon--they are getting sick--and now you’ve got it in a product and you can trace it.”

Kern County farmers appear increasingly convinced that the outbreak was most likely the result of a single rogue farmer’s illegal application of aldicarb, which, if true, would only heighten their anger over the entire watermelon industry being shut down as a result.

They believe that the state should have concentrated only on those believed to have produced contaminated fruit, allowing all others to continue to harvest.

But Wessell defended the department’s reaction:

“We have to go on the side of being conservative and go on the side of the public’s well-being. . . .

“Even if we had spent the time testing the bad guys first, everybody would have had to sit there and wait anyway. . . . I don’t think there was any equitable way to do it.

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“And if indeed there are growers who knew about their neighbors, or who know their neighbors were using this pesticide, they should have come forward. Because now they are all hurt by it.”

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