Post Office Bars Checking of Parcels Believed to Contain Quarantined Fruit

U.S. Postal Service officials have ordered workers in Orange County to stop inspecting soggy or leaky packages suspected of containing rotting, quarantined fruit, despite warnings that the parcels are a major source of fruit flies.

Sealed packages in first-class mail, even if they are about to break open, are protected by privacy laws and must be rewrapped and promptly sent on to the addressee, regional postal inspectors have told Orange County postal employees.

State agricultural officials, meanwhile, fearful of a repeat of the 1981 Mediterranean fruit fly infestation that cost more than $100 million to eradicate, have been working to refine legislation that would put packages suspected of holding fruit into the same category as those thought to contain illegal narcotics.

An internal Postal Service investigation concluded at the end of 1987 that Santa Ana postal workers were illegally holding back packages suspected of containing quarantined fruit from Hawaii.

Gera Curry, a spokeswoman for the California Food and Agriculture Department, said the Postal Service policy runs counter to the state’s efforts to control the fruit flies, which she said pose a constant threat to California’s $14-billion-a-year agriculture industry.