7 Medfly Larvae Found by County Postal Employees

U.S. Postal Service workers in Santa Ana have intercepted an illegal shipment of spoiled tropical fruit containing seven Mediterranean fruit fly larvae, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

“This prevented a potentially big Medfly infestation,” Gera Curry, information officer for the department, said Thursday. “These little creatures breed very quickly. Their gestation period is very short. There was a very good chance that there were some males and females in there. That is enough to start an infestation.”

“In 1980-1982, when we had the Medfly infestation, (eradication procedures) cost California taxpayers $100 million,” Curry said.

Box of Exotic Fruit

On June 12, postal workers at the Santa Ana general mail facility at 3101 W. Sunflower Ave. found a box containing four sapodilla, a brown-skinned fruit resembling a potato; four soursop, a cigar-shaped black fruit, and a container of various kinds of tropical peeled fruits, Curry said.

The fruit had been mailed from Honolulu to Westminster in violation of a federal quarantine that prohibits mailing of all Hawaiian fruits and vegetables unless certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Curry said. The law is designed to protect California from insect pests, plant diseases and other agricultural problems.

“Alert postal workers recognized the illegality and notified the Orange County agricultural commissioners, who destroyed the infested fruit and sent the larvae to our labs for identification,” Curry said.

James T. Aylward, Postal Service distribution clerk, said Thursday that the package was discovered by workers who brought “it to the agricultural inspector, as we always do on anything that is suspect in any way--leakage, whatever. It’s a standard policy. We don’t want any leaking to spoil anybody’s good packages.

Department of Food and Agriculture laboratory technicians Thursday confirmed that the larvae were Mediterranean fruit flies, Curry said.

It was the first discovery of Mediterranean larvae in Orange County since last August, when Santa Ana postal workers found five of the insect larvae in rotting fruit also illegally mailed from Hawaii.

Oriental Variety Found

Last year, Oriental fruit flies were found in state Food and Agriculture Department traps in July and September in both Huntington Beach and Anaheim. The Oriental fruit fly is second only to the Mediterranean fruit fly as a danger to crops, according to state officials.

Last Aug. 3, guava fruit flies were found in traps in Westminster, Midway City and Garden Grove, triggering a successful eradication program, Curry said. Another eradication program is in progress in Laguna Beach and South Laguna, where three Oriental fruit flies recently were trapped.

Curry said that state and federal officials are investigating last week’s illegal mailing of the fruit from Hawaii but that current law provides only for a fine of $100. Pending federal legislation would increase fines to at least $1,000 and allow U.S. Department of Agriculture officials “reasonable access to first-class mail parcels for enforcing U.S. plant and quarantine laws,” she added.

Labeled for Opening

Domestic mail containing plants or fruit and sent within the United States should be mailed second or third class and labeled so that it may be opened for inspection, she cautioned.

Under current law, first-class mail cannot be opened for inspection unless there is probable cause to suspect a crime or permission is granted by the recipient.

“Had that package not been leaking and the postal people had not been sharp enough to catch it, some of these (pests) are going through,” Curry said. “They are really sharp in Orange County, but how many (packages containing pests or larvae) are getting through because they are not leaking?”