Ralphs Halts Berry Orders From Mexico

Ralphs Grocery Co. halted orders of Mexican strawberries Thursday in the first indication that the hepatitis A scare might cause at least some temporary disruptions in U.S.-Mexican food trading.

The decision by Southern California’s largest supermarket chain could feed Mexican fears that a hepatitis A scare could damage the country’s $5-billion-a-year agricultural export industry. At the same time, though, officials continued to deny that the virus originated on Mexican strawberry farms.

Ralphs took the step as “a precautionary measure,” said Darius Anderson, a spokesman for the company, which operates 266 stores under the Ralphs banner and 80 Food 4 Less stores. “This does not mean that we won’t go back to Mexican suppliers in the future.”

As of Wednesday, about 30% of the strawberries in Ralphs stores were Mexican-grown. The company did not pull any of those products off its shelves. Separately, Vons Cos. reported no reduction in demand for strawberries, prices for which have been marked down this week.

However, at a Sacramento news conference Thursday, state Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman said early reports from California growers show that supermarkets are reducing strawberry orders overall in anticipation of a dip in demand.

“We do know there is an impact on sales,” Veneman said, adding that she had no statistics. “We believe it’s because of confusion on the part of consumers.”

Local health and education officials disclosed earlier this week that frozen strawberry-blueberry dessert cups served to about 9,000 students and adults in Los Angeles-area schools might have been tainted with the virus that causes hepatitis A, a relatively mild strain that can cause flu-like symptoms, especially in children.

With the help of federal investigators, officials in Michigan had earlier traced an outbreak of the illness there to strawberries from a San Diego processor. The processor says the berries came from Mexico. Federal officials are investigating and say they do not yet know the source of the virus.

Nonetheless, the matter--coming against a backdrop of rising U.S.-Mexican trade under the North American Free Trade Agreement--revived fears about sanitation and food safety south of the border.

But Mexican officials immediately jumped to the defense of their nation’s growers.

“You cannot attribute any kind of contamination to Mexican strawberries,” Mexico’s National Water Commission said in a statement. It added that frequent inspections in Baja California showed that all the growers used safe well water.

The commission “definitely rejected” that the berry crops were irrigated with polluted water--a common practice in some parts of Mexico.

Mexican officials have suggested that the fruit was contaminated in the United States, where it sat for months in refrigerated warehouses between processing and packing.

However, even though Mexican officials said the tainted strawberries are a “U.S. problem,” they expressed concern that the problem could boomerang for Mexican farmers.

Mexico’s fruit and vegetable exports have grown briskly in recent years, thanks to increasing efficiency, a devalued peso and NAFTA. From 1994 to ‘95, the latest period for which figures are available, Mexican agricultural and fishing exports to the U.S. jumped 43% to $4.7 billion, according to Mexico’s Commerce Ministry. Mexico exports about $44 million worth of strawberries to the U.S. a year.

But Mexican farmers fear that politically powerful U.S. farmers could use arguments about safety to keep Mexican crops out of the U.S. market.

“There is a risk that this will be used as a weapon, that people will make a lot out of this,” said Enrique Bautista, president of a major avocado growers association in the central state of Michoacan.

The United States only this year agreed to drop an 8-decade-old ban and allow imports of Mexican avocados. California growers had charged that the Mexican fruits carried insects that could destroy their crops.

Roberta Cook, an agricultural marketing economist at UC Davis, pooh-poohed the notion that the strawberry incident will cause permanent damage to U.S.-Mexican farm trade. Both countries have too much at stake, she said.

Mexico provides a tiny percentage of the strawberries consumed in the United States, whereas California growers produce 80% of the nation’s supply.

“It shouldn’t influence trade,” she said. “We import $1.7 billion of horticultural products from Mexico, and this is the first indication of any contamination,” if indeed the problem is ultimately traced to Mexican fields or farm workers.

Cook said growers in Baja California use the same technology that California growers use. Berries are watered by drip irrigation equipment that is kept under plastic “mulch”; the water, therefore, does not come into direct contact with the berries.

Bob Brackett, a professor of food microbiology at the University of Georgia, said conditions at Mexican farms and food processors vary wildly, from state-of-the-art to decidedly not so.

Ignacio Lara, a spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry, said Mexican farmers are not permitted to use polluted water on their farms. However, experts say the practice is common in some areas of the country. They say farmers pump water directly from runoff ditches that include rainwater, household sewage and industrial waste.

Joel Simon, author of “Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge,” a book due out this month from the Sierra Club, described how hundreds of farmers in the central Mezquital Valley came down with cholera in 1991 from working with crops irrigated with dirty water.

In parched states such as Jalisco, Nuevo Leon and Guanajuato, he said, farmers still commonly use the polluted water.

“There is no problem with recycling water for agriculture,” said Simon, a Mexico City-based journalist. “But the question is, is that whole process being supervised and regulated?”

Whatever source is finally pinpointed in the hepatitis A outbreak, industry observers say there’s no stopping the global trade bandwagon.

“You’re obviously going to hit some bumpy spots,” said Jeffrey A. Conrad, managing director of Hancock Agricultural Investment Group in Boston.

And Americans, he noted, shouldn’t think that they have all the answers. Europeans have recently threatened not to accept U.S. poultry because of what they perceive as lax standards; they also look askance at the use of hormones in beef and at genetically engineered soybeans from America.

Although Mexico’s strawberry industry says it maintains high sanitary standards, even some citizens are skeptical.

Yolanda Trapaga, a professor specializing in international agriculture at the Autonomous University of Mexico, said she doesn’t eat Mexican strawberries.

“They’re irrigated with dirty water,” she said.

Sheridan reported from Mexico City and Groves from Los Angeles. Times staff writers George White in Los Angeles and Jenifer Warren in Sacramento contributed to this report.

* HEP SHOT

Hundreds of children are inoculated against the hepatitis A virus. B1