Fruit Fly Larvae Found in Mail From Hawaii

Announcing what they called an “enormously significant” development in efforts to trace fruit fly infestations, state agricultural officials said Monday that two packages containing Mediterranean and Oriental fruit fly larvae were discovered last week by alert postal workers in Santa Ana.

Five live Mediterranean fruit fly larvae were discovered in a leaking package of 20 tropical fruits known as “soursop,” which was set aside for rewrapping and inspection in the postal service’s regional processing center in Santa Ana, officials said. The package was mailed first-class from Honolulu to an address in Westminster.

A second package from Hawaii containing decomposing soursop--found the same day, July 28--carried 12 live Oriental fruit fly larvae, said Gera Curry, spokeswoman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture in Sacramento.

“This is an enormously significant find,” Curry said Monday. “It demonstrates what we had suspected all along: that these fruit fly infestations are definitely connected to fruit being shipped illegally from Hawaii through the mails.

“Had there not been this fortuitous accident, that these packages needed rewrapping, and alert postal workers, it would not have been discovered. Our question is how many slip through without discovery?

“All Californians owe a large debt of gratitude to the workers at this postal center for their help in stopping costly infestations such as the 1980-82 Medfly infestation, which cost $100 million to eradicate,” Curry said.

State agricultural officials cannot be certain how Mediterranean fruit flies arrived in California before their rapid-fire spread through much of the state in 1980. But Curry said Hawaii is considered the probable source because it is the closest place that is heavily infested.

“It is quite probable that it (the 1980-82 infestation) came through the mails as in this incident or else brought in by a tourist,” Curry said.

Postal service distribution clerk James T. Aylward turned over the “wet, soggy packages” that had been set aside by co-workers. “When we smell a funny odor or find a leaking package with fruit in it, we isolate it and bring it to the (county) Department of Agriculture,” Aylward said.

Soursops, large green-skinned fruit that tastes like a cross between mango and pineapple, are prohibited from being mailed to California unless certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture under a 76-year-old federal quarantine order affecting all Hawaiian fruits and vegetables.

Curry said state agriculture officials are working with federal officials to prosecute the senders of the illegal shipments. In the case of the package containing Mediterranean fruit fly larvae, Curry said both the sender and addressee are private individuals who may not have been aware of the ban.

The maximum fine for violating the federal quarantine is $100, an amount Curry said state officials are working with congressional leaders to increase because of the pests’ destructive potential for California’s multibillion-dollar agriculture industry.