Fruit Scare Spoils Organic Melons : Importer Says FDA Has Offered No Inspection Procedures

Bo Mesing--only his banker knows him as John, he says--has been in the organic produce business for a decade. Last year, deciding to break fresh ground, he lined up eight farmers in Chile to grow organic cantaloupes to import through his new firm, Certified Organic.

Once unloaded in Los Angeles, the fruit would be distributed by Rainbow Natural Foods, a Denver firm specializing in organic fruits and vegetables whose Los Angles operation Mesing manages. Rainbow then would ship the melons to “natural” food stores nationwide and to Yorkshire Organics in Britain.

Right on schedule, the first melons arrived early last month. These came in for unusually close scrutiny by Food and Drug Administration inspectors (in response, Mesing learned, to telephoned warnings received by the U.S. Embassy in Santiago). But, finally, the melons were cleared for sale.

Then later that week, with the cleared fruit already in stores, the FDA announced that it had found two cyanide-tainted grapes in a shipload from Chile and urged consumers to avoid Chilean fruit. So Mesing’s first batch of organically grown cantaloupes was recalled, even as freighters approached Los Angeles with more Chilean fruit.

So far, the FDA has approved inspection procedures for grapes, nectarines, peaches, plums, apples and pears--even onions and garlic. Only the relative handful of cantaloupes remain “in detention,” and Mesing complains that the FDA seems uninclined to develop a plan to release them.

“What they’re telling me is, let them sit and rot,” he said. “They leave me without an alternative.

“Organic stuff’s gaga right now. I’ve got orders in front of me right now, and they won’t let me cut loose the product!”

The FDA has yet to approve a procedure for clearing cantaloupes, spokesman Emil Corwin in Washington confirmed. However, avocados--Mesing has organically grown Haas avocados awaiting shipment from Chile--are not restricted by the current scare, Corwin said.

Meanwhile, Richard Eastes, general manager of David Oppenheimer-California, said he ran into a new roadblock as he dispatched recalled and spoiled grapes to a land-fill.

“Because the fruit’s more than 50% water,” he said, “the water-quality people get involved. They said, ‘You can’t dump that fruit, you might contaminate ground water with cyanide.’ ”

Eastes said he finally signed a “self-declaration” that the discarded grapes were free of cyanide. “It’s absolutely incredible the paranoia in this country!”