State agriculture officials today declared a fruit quarantine for a 130-square-mile zone that includes parts of Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress and Stanton due to detection of oriental fruit flies. The quarantine zone, which also includes the Artesia/Cerritos area of Los Angeles County, stretches south to Westminster Boulevard, north to Florence Avenue, west to Paramount Boulevard and east to Anaheim Boulevard, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
]
Multiple adult flies and larvae have been detected on properties in the quarantine zone, according to the state agency. Native to Southern Asia, the flies burrow into 230 kinds of fruits and vegetables to lay eggs, which hatch into maggots that spoil the food.
A small patch of male fly attractant mixed with a “very small” dose of pesticide on trees
and similar surfaces that are eight to 10 feet off the ground are used to attract the males who eat it and die, slowing the reproduction rate, according to the CDFA. Maps of the treatment areas are available online at www.cdfa.ca.gov/plant/go/FFmaps-peps.
Removal of host fruits and vegetables, fruit cutting to detect any fly larvae that may be present and treatment of host trees and plants with an organic-approved material called spinosad is also being done, according to the CDFA. Meanwhile, we're all urged not to move fruit or vegetables grown in the area outside the quarantine zone.
Email: mc****@oc******.com. Twitter: @MatthewTCoker. Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.