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Tangerine industry endangered by fly rumour

By Ji Shaoting, Miao Xiaojuan and Wang Cong (Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-11-01 16:12

Rumors that maggot of fruit lies had been found millions of tangerines have left thousands of tonnes of fruit rotting unsold, toppling the whole industry chain across China, according to fruit farmers.

Fruit farmers in Taoyuan county, Hunan Province, dump the tangerines. [http://www.northnews.cn ]

As with many other tangerine farmers, Lin Xuezhen in a remote county in central Hunan Province sighed when staring at her trees.

"The tangerines are definitely going bad on the trees because no one buys," she said.

Her county, named Shimen, one of the famed tangerine producing areas in the province, used to attract more than 3,000 dealers during harvest time.

The province, a major producer of tangerines, expects a direct economic loss of 400 million yuan (about $60 million) as mountains of tangerines sit in the market without buyers, said the local agricultural bureau.

The case is the same in the neighbouring Hubei Province, where 70 percent of its tangerine harvest remains unsold and farmers look set to take a hit of up to 1.5 billion yuan if the scare continues, the local agricultural bureau said.

Customers are driven away by fear of finding maggot in the fruits.

"It's disgusting," said Lan Yanghang, 28, who works for a Shanghai-based finance consulting company, "even thinking of squirmy maggot in tangerines."

He saw some pictures on the Internet showing that some tiny white maggots were hiding in the tangerines; after that he stopped eating them.

The panic was blown up by fast spreading rumours in reports and text messages since September 13, saying that all tangerines had been affected in a small county in southwest China's Sichuan Province.

The remote county is called Wangcang County of Guangyuan City. The Sichuan provincial government confirmed the existence of the maggots but denied the spreading of the infected tangerines, saying that the county was not one of the major tangerine producing areas in the province and only provided fruits for local customers.

Government officials announced its effort, saying that more than 1,200 tonnes of fruits had been disinfected and buried under ground to prevent further spreading and only 12 tonnes of them were found to have pests in them.

The pests had been contained and the situation is under control, said Mou Jinyi, an engineer of the provincial agriculture department.

However, the panic spread nationwide soon, while fear hit fruit-growing peasants in main producing areas in southern China provinces, which triggered investigation by China's Ministry of Agriculture, which was followed by market saving efforts.

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