In response to such concerns, Brown's chief of staff, B. T. Collins, staged a news conference during which he publicly drank a small glass of malathion.
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In 1981, California Governor Jerry Brown, who had established a reputation as a strong environmentalist, was confronted with a serious medfly infestation in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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Fleets of helicopters sprayed malathion at night, and the California National Guard set up highway checkpoints and collected many tons of local fruit.
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During the week of September 9, 2007, adult flies and their larvae were found in Dixon, California.
It is of economic significance because it is strongly attracting to an agricultural pest, the Mediterranean fruit fly Ceratitis capitata.
The depression and the devastating arrival of the Mediterranean fruit fly a year later destroyed both the tourist and citrus industries upon which Florida depended.
However, the stock market collapse in 1929, the discovery of the Mediterranean fruit fly and hurricanes in the later 1920s heralded the decline of his businesses.