U.S., State at Odds Over Ban on Mexican Fruit

State and federal agricultural officials have reached a stalemate over a recent Sacramento decision to bar Mexican citrus fruit from entering California.

The ban was imposed Feb. 24 after larvae of the dreaded Mexican fruit fly turned up in a box of oranges at a border inspection station in Blythe, state Department of Food and Agriculture officials said Tuesday.

They said the fruit should have been treated for pests in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon where it was grown, under a program supervised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Federal agriculture officials believe the ban is unnecessary. But the state said it will not lift the ban until federal officials give a detailed accounting of the infestation. USDA officials say there is nothing more to explain.

According to the Los Angeles Agricultural Commission, about 28,000 40-pound cartons of Mexican oranges reach markets here annually. That represents a relatively small percentage of the oranges consumed in California.

“We are trying to work with the USDA to find out what went wrong there,” said William Callison, chief of the state’s pest exclusion branch.

Callison said the ban would remain in force until U.S. officials can provide an “acceptable explanation” for the larvae find and a list of “what they’ve done to correct the problem.”

But USDA officials contended Tuesday that they have been unable to come up with an explanation and said their pest control program in Mexico appears to be working fine.

“We can’t find what caused the problem,” said Harvey Ford, deputy administrator for the USDA in Washington. “They’ve gotten about all the explanation I know to give them.”

Another federal official, Frank Myers, USDA regional director in San Francisco, complained that state officials are being stubborn. “California has taken the position that it will keep the border closed regardless of what we tell them,” he said.

Officials at the Mexican Consulate and Mexican Trade Commission in Los Angeles declined comment on the impasse, saying they know nothing about it.

But citrus brokers in California and Texas who deal in Mexican fruit products said the standoff has caused them to take a financial beating.

“Our company sells 6,000 to 7,000 40-pound cartons of Mexican oranges a week,” said one Los Angeles citrus broker who did not want to be named. “That’s what we are losing now.”

Second Tiff in a Year

This is the second time in less than a year that state and federal agricultural officials have tangled over the Mexican fruit fly.

Last June, state inspectors found live larvae of the Mexican fruit fly--a yellowish-brown insect a little larger than a housefly--in Mexican mangoes sold in supermarkets in Northern California and Orange County. The Mexican fruit fly is considered a serious threat to California’s vast citrus, avocado and peach crops.

After closing the border to mangoes, state officials requested that the USDA inspect Mexican mangoes before fumigation, certify fumigated shipments and closely monitor their transit to the U.S.-Mexico border, said Gera Curry, spokeswoman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture. The USDA agreed to those conditions.

Three Flies Found

But on Feb. 24, an inspector at the border inspection station at Blythe, about 200 miles east of Los Angeles, discovered three Mexican fruit fly larvae in a box of oranges sampled from a truck bound for Los Angeles. Once confirmed, state agricultural officials immediately imposed a ban.

State and Los Angeles Agricultural Commission officials conducted chemical analyses of the infected oranges and found that although the load was USDA-certified as being fumigated, it showed no residue of pesticides, Curry said.

She said there were other irregularities.

The USDA certification applied to a shipment of 905 cartons of oranges, according to Curry. Yet “by the time it reached the U.S. border, paper work showed we were dealing with 1,050 cartons,” she said.

“We have no way of knowing whether the extra 145 boxes were from the same grove. We simply can’t afford to take chances with a super-pest of this magnitude.”