State Says Airlines Helped Shippers Avoid Pest Probe : Crackdown: Medflies and other insects were undercounted as a result, agriculture officials say.

A group of Latin American air carriers has encouraged fruit distributors to delay their shipments to Los Angeles International Airport to avoid an intensive inspection program meant to determine whether pests, including the Medfly, are entering California via air cargo, agriculture authorities said Wednesday.

“Our information is that the airlines called their shippers and said, ‘If it doesn’t have to come now, hold it,’ ” said Gera Curry, spokeswoman for the state Department of Food and Agriculture. “These inspections make for long lines and delays . . . so, it’s an inconvenience to their customers.”

The air carriers’ actions during a five-day “cargo inspection blitz” that ended Friday almost certainly resulted in an underestimation of the number of pests being brought into the country, said Isi Siddiqui, assistant director of the state Department of Food and Agriculture.

“The results of the cargo blitz were skewed because we have evidence that some of the airlines told their customers not to ship because this was the week the inspection was taking place,” Siddiqui said after briefing reporters on progress in the Medfly eradication effort.

Officials declined to name the airlines involved but said there was no evidence that U.S.-based air carriers had similarly moved to evade the inspections. The air carriers’ efforts allegedly involved shipments from Mexico, Ecuador, Guatemala and El Salvador, among other Central and South American countries.

State officials have long blamed Southern California’s Medfly infestation on contaminated fruit being brought into the country by foreign travelers and commercial shippers. The intensive periodic inspections--in which officials inspect 100% of fruit shipments and passenger luggage--were ordered to determine the risk posed by undeclared agricultural products.

A number of Los Angeles and Orange County communities have been targeted for repeated malathion spraying to wipe out the infestation, which poses a threat to California’s $16-billion agricultural industry.

Penalties for possessing, propagating, processing or selling a plant or other imported items subject to quarantine include fines of up to $10,000 per violation, authorities said.

However, officials said there is no law that prevents shippers or others from circumventing the inspections by notifying their clients that their produce may be subject to scrutiny.

Siddiqui said the state plans no specific action beyond educating the air carriers “about cooperation in pest control, and we have every intention of doing that.”

Cargo representatives for Ecuatoriana Airline and TACA International Airlines, one of the largest carriers flying out of Guatemala, said they had no knowledge of any of their shippers being warned about the recent inspection.

However, Jose Ruiz, cargo representative for TACA, said: “We obviously place calls to all our clients if it is (an inspection) that will be with us for a long time. . . . This blitz lasted only a week and there weren’t many perishables being sent during that time. We didn’t find the need to call them (shippers) and let them know.”

Mike Wright, assistant regional director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said his agency was concerned but generally powerless to stop air carriers from avoiding such inspections, which have cost the state $225,000 since they began in May.

“My preference would be that they not inform their shippers or passengers when we have an inspection blitz,” Wright said. “But I can’t stop them from informing cargo shippers this is going on.”

In addition to evading the inspections, Siddiqui said, officials identified at least one case in which an air package containing agricultural products disappeared after being “placed on hold with orders that it not be removed” from the premises. “Our inspectors went back and found that the cargo was gone.”

“We want the United States Department of Agriculture to investigate this case,” said Siddiqui, who declined to name the carrier involved. “First, we have to see if there was a violation on the part of the airline or personnel.”

Despite the air carriers’ actions, officials reported that the five-day inspection of 1,387 shipments--18 of them mislabeled or undeclared--from 44 countries and the state of Hawaii turned up a disturbing variety of potentially dangerous pests and diseases entering California through international terminals in Los Angeles.

Findings included 50 pounds of lychee fruit flown from Taiwan via Canada that was infested with larvae from the family of insects that includes the Medfly and the Mexican and Oriental fruit flies, authorities said. The larvae were too young to positively identify as Medflies, authorities said.

In addition, a shipment of dried lemons from Kuwait was destroyed after inspectors found they were infected with citrus canker.

The inspection also turned up unanticipated cargo including a quantity of suspicious white powder that was handed over to U.S. Customs officials, and “a shipment of fraudulent university diplomas,” Siddiqui said.

In the future, Curry said, state agriculture inspectors will “go in quickly and unannounced following the lead of the U.S. Customs Service.”

“That will not allow for advance notice or special preparations, which could skew the results and effectiveness of our inspection efforts,” Curry said.

Separately, state agriculture authorities inspected the baggage of 34,393 passengers at the airport between July 29 and Aug. 4. That operation intercepted 148 pests--including 14 Mexican fruit flies--on fruit shipments such as mangoes, avocados, peaches and plums that may be hosts for the pests.

One of the most damaging insect pests in the world, a female Medfly can lay up to 300 eggs in a lifetime, which hatch into maggots that feed on the fruit pulp surrounding them.

The fruit spoils and drops to the ground, enabling the larvae to enter the soil. About eight days later, adult flies emerge and reach sexual maturity in four to five days.