Beagle Factor and Medfly Success : State must devise a plan, then see it through
Hearing the state declare “victory” over the Medfly left us uneasy.
Uneasy sort of the way foot soldiers of the Imperial Guard must have felt before Napoleon led them into the seemingly unlosable Battle of Waterloo. They no doubt found graceful French ways of saying, “Yes, boss!” while silently praying, “God, we hope he knows what he’s doing!”
Does the state of California know what it’s doing in the Medfly war? Public proclamations notwithstanding, the war isn’t over. Even those celebrating “eradication” of the crop-destroying pests admit we have not seen the last of them. The anti-Medfly effort has merely changed; gone, thankfully, are the midnight helicopter runs of malathion mist. The routine of shutting windows, throwing tarps over school sandboxes and nervously checking the car finish the morning after is over--for now.
Over, but not forgotten. The new director of food and agriculture that Gov.-elect Pete Wilson is expected to appoint should review the 16-month, $52-million Medfly fight. He or she must devise a comprehensive strategy for the next Medfly find in Southern California. Unless many experts are wrong, a Medfly reappearance is inevitable.
Three areas deserve further exploration: better detection of the pests already here; better ways of controlling the transport of pests into California and more research into nonpesticide or human-friendly weapons against all food-threatening pests.
The state has made some strides in research with the passage of a law that creates a Center for Pest Research. It will coordinate all pest-control research performed in California and place greater emphasis on controlling pests biologically. The center is an important step, but sound research takes time. In the meantime, the state must have more immediate options.
One option is better inspection of mail packages that may contain infested fruit. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says it already has increased its capacity to inspect fruit from overseas; the new state agriculture director should find out exactly what that means. It isn’t sufficient if, as one official told The Times, the USDA effort consists merely of the addition of a single fruit-sniffing beagle.
The biggest challenge ahead is detection. Budget constraints already have been cited as the explanation for the state’s porous Medfly trapping system. But when the state had to, it came up with $52 million in taxpayer money to spray malathion over urbanized Southern California. The next agriculture director, as the new general in the Medfly war, must not lead Californians into another malathion-maximizing battle.
