Fruit Flies Are Spreading Across U.S. Crops. The Government ’s Outdated Approach Isn’t Helping

For two weeks in August, a crew of workers systematically confiscated every orange in Vince Bernard’s groves in Valley Center, Calif. They buried the oranges—at least $500,000 worth of fruit, Bernard says—in ditches on his neighbor’s property. They did so by order of the U.S. government, which came accompanied by armed California Highway Patrol officers and which did not pay Bernard a penny for the crops. Bernard’s oranges were destroyed because the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) found five Mexican fruit flies on a neighbor’s property, which it considers “an imminent threat” to California’s economy. The Mexican fruit fly lays its eggs in apples, avocados, and oranges, and those eggs hatch into larvae, which tunnel through the fruit, making it unfit for human consumption. As climate change has warmed the west coast, California has been finding more fruit flies of all sorts of varieties, including Mexican, Oriental, and Mediterranean, in its traps than it did in the past. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Usually, growers near where fruit flies are found must abide by a quarantine, meaning they fruit must stay on their property though they can juice it and sell that juice. Confiscation of the kind that happened to Bernard is rare, and the incident illuminates a power imbalance between farmers and a government agency that some scientists say has utterly failed the people it is supposed to prot...
Source: TIME: Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Uncategorized climate change Climate Is Everything Food & Drink healthscienceclimate Source Type: news