COLUMN ONE : Fly Fight Avoids the Old Traps : The war of the Medfly has new rules of engagement. This time it’s spray first, debate later--and never trust a sterile ally.

On June 8, 1980, a tiny fly was trapped in San Jose. The insect was sent by third class mail to a Sacramento laboratory for identification, and 10 days later it was found to be a Mediterranean fruit fly.

A full year passed before Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. ordered aerial spraying of pesticides to attack what by then had spread into a huge infestation--a delay that cost California’s farm industry $100 million and significantly crippled Brown’s political career.

On Aug. 6 of this year, a tiny fly was trapped near Dodger Stadium. It was rushed aboard the first available plane to Sacramento, where experts quickly identified the winged insect as a Medfly. Five days later, helicopters were dropping malathion over a section of Los Angeles.

As the difference in response time indicates, the infamous infestation of 1981 has provided agricultural officials and politicians with a host of hard-earned lessons about how to fight the Medfly, lessons that now are being applied in earnest to combat an expanding infestation in the Southern California.

Today, unlike 1981, they spray first and debate later. They set more traps in order to detect pockets of infestation more quickly, and they no longer expect winter’s cold to provide an easy means of eradication. They mass-produce sterile flies which, released by the millions, are designed to breed the destructive fertile flies out of existence. And this time “they” refers mainly to scientists and bureaucrats--politicians have learned from Brown that the Medfly is a formidable opponent best left for the experts to battle.

“We will win the fight against the Medfly in Los Angeles,” predicted Rex Magee, assistant director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “This time it is easier. We are able to do what we need to do right away.”

Though in many instances the combatants have benefited from 1981, the wily Medfly nonetheless has managed to frustrate them anew. The fly has spread from Whittier north to the San Fernando Valley and south into Orange County, and eradication is nowhere in sight.

“It’s a highly unusual and highly unexpected infestation,” said Bill Edwards, Los Angeles County’s chief deputy agricultural commissioner, “and we don’t have any good scientific or biological reason why the pest has spread the way it has or why it continues to be a problem.

“One change that we might see come out of this is we might be suggesting two aerial treatments instead of one,” said Edwards, a veteran of the county’s six previous Medfly battles dating back to 1975. “If we had used that in the Whittier area, we might not have the problem we are having now.”

The corps of combatants in the current infestation includes many veterans of the 1981 effort.

“The people who started the Medfly experience in 1981 as corporals are now master sergeants,” said Jerry Scribner, Medfly project director in 1981. Scribner himself, a Sacramento lawyer, is sitting this one out.

The campaign against the tiny, yellow-bellied insect is expected to take a pivotal turn next week, after a team of scientists and government officials meet to evaluate the successes and failures of eradication efforts thus far and map out new strategies for the coming months.

The decisions made inside the squat, stucco office building of the Los Angeles County agricultural commissioner are of great significance to California’s most important economic entity--the $16-billion-a-year agricultural industry.

If even a single fertile Medfly crosses the Tehachapi Mountains that separate urban Los Angeles from the San Joaquin Valley “all hell will break loose,” said Mike Durando, executive director of the California Tree Fruit League, which represents farmers and shippers of 95% of the state’s deciduous fruit products.

“We are extremely concerned now,” Durando said, “but we are confident that the state will do everything it can to eradicate the Medfly.”

Since 1981, officials have bolstered markedly the authority and make-up of the state’s Medfly advisory panel, a move that has allowed for quicker decision-making.

During the 1981 infestation, 15 “technical advisers”--including growers, environmentalists and federal officials with diverse interests--often gave conflicting and confusing advice to state leaders. Now, a streamlined group of five nationally recognized fruit fly experts guide the actions of state and county officials.

“We do whatever they tell us,” Magee said.

The dean of Medfly experts is U.S. Department of Agriculture entomologist Roy Cunningham. The Hawaii-based scientist served on the panel in 1981 and now is its unofficial leader. He said that the Medfly continues to surprise him. For for example, he said, the current infestation has again rewritten the book on how to breed Medflies out of existence with sterile mates and how to chart the outbreak’s spread with trapping.

Since 1981, officials have improved a number of their procedures for using sterile flies, including stepped up “quality controls” to ensure sterility. In 1981, officials blamed the failure to completely eradicate the pest on a batch of supposedly sterile Medflies brought from Peru that later were suspected to have been fertile.

In the last eight years, California has built its own sterile fly rearing factory in Hawaii, where the Medfly is endemic. But the facility, despite stepping up production to 130 million flies a week, has not been able to produce enough to be useful in fighting the current infestation. And officials now are seeking additional sterile flies from Mexico. In 1987 and 1988, officials succeeded in wiping out small Medfly infestations in the Los Angeles Basin by spraying one night with the pesticide malathion and then releasing millions of sterile flies. This tactic has not worked in the current outbreak.

“We developed a great deal of success until this present program of doing a single malathion treatment and following it immediately with steriles,” said Reg Rosander, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official who also was involved in the 1981 Medfly battle. “We were hopeful that would continue with this program, but for reasons unknown to us at the present time, that doesn’t seem to be working.”

Added Richard Rice, a UC Davis entomologist and member of the scientific advisory panel: “One thing we may be seeing is that steriles have a place with small, clearly defined infestations, but in extremely large geographic areas they perhaps are just not adequate.”

Trapping practices also have proven to be inadequate again. A major problem in the 1981 infestation, officials acknowledged afterward, was that setting one trap for each square mile had not been enough to detect quickly the appearance of the pest in a new neighborhood. As a result, five traps are now set for each square mile in cities.

But even that is not enough, officials have learned. Three weeks ago, scientists called for a doubling of trapping to 10 per square mile in Los Angeles County.

“If we had had the 10 up early on, maybe we would have had a good chance of stopping the infestation in Whittier,” Cunningham said.

That still is not enough, in the view of some experts. Several scientists said that next week they will push for 25 per square mile because of the severity of the Los Angeles infestation.

Another byproduct of 1981 is that the cardboard traps set in trees are now checked year-round. In the 1981 infestation, scientists mistakenly believed that the fly would not survive the brisk Northern California winters. What they did not know was that millions of tiny Medfly pupae nestled in hibernation beneath warm soil over the winter. In spring of 1981, the infestation exploded as the baby flies popped out from the earth and there were not enough traps to detect them.

According to “An Analysis of the Mediterranean Fruit Fly Eradication Program in California, 1980-1982” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the 1981 outbreak was worsened by this “scientific misjudgment.”

Medflies thrive in temperatures in the high 70s to mid-80s. As weather cools their breeding cycles simply slow down.

“This means that we can go two or four months without much activity, but we know the problem is still out there,” said James Carey, a UC Davis entomologist and advisory panel member.

Some lessons of 1981 seem to have been forgotten. For instance, officials have blamed the Southern California infestation on people who illegally smuggle infected fruit into the country and outside quarantine zones.

During the current outbreak, grocery stores in infested neighborhoods have passed out state-produced “Don’t Spread Med” flyers to shoppers. Flyers also have been distributed to 24,748 homes around the larvae finds in Whittier.

Until now there have been none of the billboards, radio and TV commercials and bumper stickers that were employed widely after the 1981 infestation. The campaign fell victim to budget cuts in the mid-1980s.

“I think one of the biggest weaknesses is that people are not well-informed on how this fly is being spread,” said state Sen. Ruben Ayala (D-San Bernardino), who chairs the Senate Agriculture and Water Resources Committee.

Gera Curry, spokeswoman for the state Agricultural Department, disagrees: “It is not a matter of the amount of publicity, it’s a matter of people paying attention to it.”

The current infestation, though the Southland’s worst, so far has required less spraying than the 1981 outbreak. Then, 1,496 square miles spanning eight counties--mostly in Northern California--received as many as 20 weekly doses of aerial pesticide spray. Currently, 232 square miles of Los Angeles and Orange counties have been targeted for one or two doses of pesticide spray.

The speed with which spraying is ordered represents the most extreme tactical difference between today and 1981. Aerial spraying “is happening more quickly, almost before people have a chance to get organized in opposition,” said Scribner.

Although signs of political and citizen discontent over aerial spraying are beginning to surface in Los Angeles County, the outcry is a whisper compared to the howl of protests in 1981 from local officials in Santa Clara County. Brown, facing opposition to aerial spraying from environmentalists and residents, called out the National Guard and a legion of state workers to attempt an alternative approach of fruit stripping, ground spraying and release of sterile flies.

Just when officials thought they had succeeded, the small infestation in Santa Clara County exploded into a statewide outbreak. Finally, Brown ordered aerial spraying, saying he was forced to do so under the threat of a federal quarantine of California produce.

In 1981, Scribner said, farmers felt that the state Department of Food and Agriculture under Brown “was in the hands of the enemy, that it was run by environmentalists. . . . Now, they feel the department is run by people sympathetic to their concern.”

In fact, the present director, Henry Voss, is a farmer.

During the current outbreak, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors--whose conservative Republican majority is allied with Deukmejian--has maintained a low profile.

Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) conducted a public hearing this week on the health effects of malathion, but only 20 people showed up, most of them government bureaucrats.

Unlike Brown, Deukmejian has steered clear of personal involvement in the Medfly battle, leaving the decision to the experts. In doing so, he has heeded the advice that Scribner gave in 1982: “We would have been much better off if the eradication project had been left to the scientists.”

But that is not to say the governor is not paying attention.

“History is not going to repeat itself,” said Deukmejian spokesman Kevin Brett. “The governor certainly remembers what happened to the prior Administration when they did not pull out all the stops, when they hesitated. People remember what happened in 1981 and we certainly will not see that sorry chapter repeated.”