Farmers Welcome End to Medfly Measures

The end of a two-year medfly quarantine area in the Los Angeles Basin could mean fewer hassles for Ventura County farmers.

This should reduce the need for the expensive protective measures local growers have to take when shipping fruit through the quarantine zone.

“They used to have to net the fruit--cover it with a net--when they’d transport through the county,” according to Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau.

Lifting the quarantine, however, should have little effect on prices local avocado and citrus growers receive for their produce. The formerly quarantined areas of Los Angeles County, Laird said, do not produce as much of those commodities as does Ventura County.

Measures to stop the spread of medflies in Ventura County ended with the Aug. 1, 1995, lifting of a quarantine zone around Camarillo.

Although the county agricultural commissioner’s office still monitors its network of insect traps for signs of the flies, none have been found since Nov. 21, 1994, when two were caught on the grounds of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo.

Larry Hawkins, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said there are no plans to release sterilized male fruit flies in Ventura County--as had been done in the Los Angeles quarantine area--or return to a program of aerial malathion spraying.

“Those are only used in cases where they have an active medfly infestation, and that’s not the case in Ventura County,” he said.