- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
News Brief: March 16, 2013
The New York Times' report focuses on how the state "handled Mefly scares going back more than three decades," wrote Clyde Haberman.
The article begins:
"Ceratitis capitata. To a Muggle's ears, it sounds like an incantation from a Hogwarts wizard. If only the matter were whimsical.
Ceratitis capitata may be better known by its nonscientific name: the Mediterranean fruit fly, or Medfly to its friends. Only the Medfly has no friends, certainly not among fruit and vegetable growers, and certainly not among anyone interested in reasonably priced produce undamaged by these insects, whose eggs, hatched under the skin of, say, a tomato or a peach, develop into larvae that feast on the pulp. California, the nation's fruit basket, with a $40-billion-a-year agricultural industry, feels especially vulnerable. How that state has handled Medfly scares going back more than three decades is the focus of the latest installment of Retro Report, a series of documentary videos that take a second look at major news stories from the past."
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