Medfly Invasion Foreseen : Agriculture: The question is when, county officials say. They hope quick action will stop the pest from ruining up to $400 million in produce.

An invasion of the Medfly in Ventura County is inevitable, whether or not the state’s controversial aerial spraying of malathion eradicates the financially ruinous pest in Los Angeles and Orange counties, Ventura County Agricultural Commissioner Earl McPhail said this week.

And just as soon as a single fertile Medfly is found in the county, McPhail said, state agriculture officials are prepared to start spraying malathion to protect crops.

“The philosophy that we have is not if; it’s when,” McPhail said. “We may get it as flop-over from Los Angeles County, but we could also get it directly through the mail or with someone traveling from an infested area.”

A heavy and unchecked infestation nearby, however, drastically increases the likelihood of an invasion here, McPhail said.

McPhail said he cannot predict when an infestation or a single fertile female Medfly might arrive in the county, or whether it would be found in an urban or rural agriculture area.

But he said the state Food and Agriculture Department, which runs the malathion program, has helicopters on contract ready to spray an infested area as soon as a single fertile fly is found.

Such a finding would trigger an immediate state quarantine of a 9-square-mile area surrounding the fly trap, McPhail said.

He said the state would immediately order aerial spraying in that area, as well as ground applications of the pesticide followed by releases of sterile male flies, if they are available, to mate with female flies and prevent fertilization.

If more flies were caught in the county’s 950 traps, the malathion treatments would spread with the infestation, McPhail said. The repeated spray application of malathion mixed with a protein-sugar bait in Los Angeles and Orange counties now covers 380 square miles.

An infestation in Ventura County would wipe out about $260 million in annual exports of citrus and avocados that are shipped to Pacific Rim countries, predominantly Japan, McPhail said.

An infestation could threaten another $140 million in fruits that are host to the Medfly, but shipped nationwide and into Canada, McPhail said.

That is more than half the county’s $785-million agriculture industry.

An infestation would devastate growers in the county, said Link Leavens, whose family farms 800 acres of citrus and avocados from Santa Paula to Moorpark.

“If we allow the Medfly to become indigenous in our county, we will become the pariah to the rest of the states and the rest of the world,” Leavens said. “Even the back-yard grower with tomatoes and fruit trees would be hurt. That fruit would become garbage and mush and maggoty.”

A single fertile Medfly caught 15 miles east of Ventura County in Sylmar last October is already starting to cost area growers.

Three export markets, Australia, New Zealand and Korea, which had just begun to develop into significant buyers for area growers, are refusing to accept most county fruit. Those three countries, which McPhail said take 20% of the county’s exports to the Pacific Rim, will not accept any fruit grown or packed within a 50-mile radius of a Medfly find, he said.

McPhail hopes that Japan, to which the county exports about 30% of its citrus, will continue to accept fruit from quarantine areas as long as it has been fumigated.

Recent cool weather has the Medfly population in check, said David Buettner, chief deputy agriculture commissioner for the county. Cool weather slows the reproductive rate of the prolific female fly, which lays up to 800 eggs at a time beneath the skin of soft fruits.

But the real test for the county will come in the spring and summer months when warm weather causes the flies to reproduce up to nine times as fast as during cold-weather months, Buettner said.

“That will be the critical time,” he said.

Buettner and growers are counting on the ability of the aerial spraying program over urban areas to the south to keep the fly out of agricultural areas of Ventura County.

“We’re in pretty good shape for now,” Buettner said. But if environmentalists in Los Angeles County are successful in stopping the aerial spraying, that could change drastically, he said.

Two environmental groups, the National Resources Defense Council and Pesticide Watch, recently announced plans to file suit to stop the state’s program of spraying in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The Sierra Club also opposes the malathion aerial spraying program, said Claudia Elliott, state club chairwoman.

“We want them to stop spraying until the study is done,” she said, referring to a state panel appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian to determine the safety of malathion. “In the meantime, they can use sterile flies or ground spraying,” she said.

In addition to the state panel study, the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, has ordered the manufacturer of malathion to perform more tests on the product to determine whether it causes cancer, said Albert Heier, EPA spokesman for pesticides in Washington. Two of the four original tests performed showed some indications that malathion may cause cancer in laboratory animals, Heier said, but the tests were inconclusive.

It will take another four years to perform the necessary tests on mice and rats, Heier said. In the meantime, EPA will not likely change the status of the pesticide that allows the state to spray it over populated areas, he said.

“But the status may well change in California just because of the citizens there,” Heier said. “There is a huge outrage factor.”

For each acre, the state mixes 2.8 ounces of malathion with 2.5 gallons of a protein and sugar bait, which attracts the flies because of their need for protein at emergence from their pupal stage.

Times Poll Would you favor or oppose a ballot proposition for road construction that would raise the sales tax in Ventura County, or have you heard enough about that to say? Have not heard enough: 42% Favor: 32% Oppose: 24% Not sure: 2% Would you favor or oppose a ballot proposition to build a new county jail that would raise the sales tax in Ventura County by half a cent or have you heard enough about that to say? Have not heard enough: 25% Favor: 22% Oppose: 50% Not sure: 3% As of today, would you vote for both of these propositions, only for the road tax, only for the jail tax or for neither of them? Both: 19% Only road construction: 27% Only jail construction: 8% Neither: 37% Not sure or refused to answer: 9%