State Declares Disputed Victory in Medfly War

State and national officials Monday issued their latest declaration of victory in California’s long campaign against the Mediterranean fruit fly, even as skeptics suggested that the announcement was based more on politics than science.

“This is a victory for California agriculture,” said Gov. Pete Wilson, referring to the lifting of a quarantine--the last in the state--that restricted the movement of fruit within a 1,500-square-mile area encompassing most of the Los Angeles Basin. “Our efforts have been a success.”

And in Orange County, growers and agricultural officials applauded the quarantine’s end, predicting that it will mean fewer headaches for growers and packers.

“The bottom line is, hurray. It’s good news,” said Orange County Agricultural Commissioner Rick LeFeuvre.

But while Wilson was claiming that the blue-eyed insect had been banished by the most recent, $56-million campaign, skeptics saw the declaration as politically motivated and the latest in a series of victories that prove to be short-lived.

“This is just standard operating procedure,” said Hawaii entomologist Roy Cunningham, who heads California’s Mediterranean Fruit Fly Science Advisory Panel, a panel of experts that has had frequent run-ins with state policymakers.

The eradication, he said, “is not a permanent condition. Undoubtedly [the fly] will be reintroduced . . . by people smuggling [infested] fruit into the area either knowingly or unknowingly.”

Cunningham said the medfly has been declared eradicated at least half a dozen different times in infestations throughout the state over the last 20 years, only to show up somewhere else. “Each one is a new battle, a new invasion,” he said.

Another panel member, UC Davis entomologist James Carey, said he believes that the medfly is still here--albeit probably at low levels.

“In my view, the medfly is still established in the L.A. Basin,” he said. “They’ve gone through this before--declare eradication and then it flares back up somewhere.”

Carey said that politics and economics, fueled by the state’s immense agriculture industry, have driven the effort to declare “victory” over what he called “an insidious chronic disease.”

Critics of the state-funded medfly program contend that the California Department of Food and Agriculture is subsidizing farmers with tax money by paying for the fruit fly program, and that Monday’s announcement is part of the state’s plan to continue picking up the tab.

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“The declaration of victory is a pat on the back, which is a way to line up the state funds for next year,” said Harry Snyder, co-director of Consumers Union’s West Coast office.

Although the small fly has returned again and again during its 21-year history in California, agriculture officials maintain that this time is different.

“The technology and ability to deal with the insect has matured and progressed,” said Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. “Now we have a proven technology to eradicate the medfly, and we’re going to use that technology in a preventive mode, hopefully to prevent another infestation.”

Hawkins was referring to the Sterile Insect Technique program, in which hundreds of millions of sterile flies were released every week to mate with wild flies, the largest sterile insect release program in California history.

An elaborate trapping system that placed 25 traps per square mile within the quarantine zone has not turned up any medflies since July 1994, said John Connell, the head of the state’s medfly containment program.

“From our perspective, there are no medflies in the L.A. Basin,” Connell said.

The quarantine affected everything from a resident’s gift basket of backyard vegetables to an Inland Empire grower’s ability to ship fruit to the Pacific Rim out of the Long Beach port.

Residents were barred from moving any home-grown products off their property. Grocers were ordered to use netting, blasts of fresh air or plastics to keep the flies from laying eggs in fruit for sale. Residential landscapers and nursery owners were required to dispose of the backyard fruit that they grew according to state and federal guidelines.

Lifting the quarantine does not mean that Los Angeles is totally without restrictions, however. In the City Terrace area, agriculture officials said, residents are still barred from moving backyard fruit because of another, related pest: the Mexican fruit fly.

Connell said the state will switch into a prevention mode. There will be fewer sterile fly releases and an intensive public awareness campaign, which he said will cost the state about $7.7 million over the next three to four years, with matching federal funds.

Growers, packers and county agricultural officials relished the quarantine’s end after more than two rough years in which the restrictions limited where and how avocados, oranges and other export goods could be packed and shipped. In recent years, any medfly sighting has threatened the movement of the commodities, which tend to command a much higher price overseas.

“We’ve been under quarantine it seems like forever,” said Leon Spaugy, Los Angeles County’s agricultural commissioner. He noted that the region has been under various quarantines for the medfly off and on since an outbreak in 1975, with almost annual infestations since 1987.

The most recent quarantine cost the avocado and citrus industries heavily because of protective measures needed at the harbor, where goods are shipped to markets in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

Exports were not halted, Spaugy said, but special measures taken to reassure foreign customers proved expensive. Spaugy was optimistic that the eradication efforts and planned preventive measures would keep the medfly at bay.

In Orange County, the quarantine area included most of the land north and west of Jamboree Road, said LeFeuvre.

Leon Gardner, foreman of Yorba Orange Growers, expressed delight that the quarantine was over. Throughout the quarantine, the 40-member, grower-owned cooperative in Anaheim has had to pay other facilities outside the affected zone to pack produce for export to certain markets that refused to accept goods from the quarantine area.

“It has been a big financial burden on our growers to have them pay packers outside the area [so that we could] keep our foreign markets,” he said.

“A lot of growers, packers and processors are in that [quarantine] zone. It limits your markets. A lot of time you don’t get the money that the produce is worth.”

“Now,” he said, “we have all our markets again.”

Villa Park Orchards Assn. a packinghouse in Orange, could not ship citrus to Japan during the quarantine, said Keith French, manager of field operations. Instead, fruit had to be hauled to Villa Park’s other packing house in Fillmore, outside the quarantine zone.

Monday’s news “is a big plus for our growers. It cuts down on the hauling costs for them,” French said.

Even growers outside the quarantine zone expressed relief.

“Just the fact it’s lifted is a huge burden off the minds of growers,” said A.G. Kawamura, former president of the Orange County Farm Bureau and a partner in Orange County Produce, an Irvine-based grower.

Times staff writers Bettina Boxall, Dan Morain, Martha Groves, Eric Lichtblau and Deborah Schoch contributed to this story.