Chile's Agriculture and Livestock Service (SAG) has announced that Mediterranean fruit fly eradication efforts in the northern city of Iquique have been successful. 

The Medfly was detected in November 2017 in a northern area of the city.

César Cardozo, the regional director of SAG, said that the quarantine measures have now been lifted after three biological cycles were completed without any new detections of the pest.

"Thanks to SAG's detection system in [the region of] Tarapacá, 11 adult flies were detected. However, we never found any presence of larvae, making us think that the detection in Iquique was due to the illegal entry of agricultural products," he said.

For this reason, SAG Tarapacá will continue to strengthen its regulatory force, which has intercepted more than 34 metric tons (MT) of agricultural products that have entered the region illegally in 2018.

"Our region's high border permeability means we are at risk of illegal products entering the region, carrying pests and disease. Therefore, we must continue our surveillance on the border, on the highways and on the places where vegetables or meat are sold," said Cardozo.

"We will continue to put forward our reports before the Public Ministry so we can obtain bigger sanctions against those threatening the phytosanitary state of the country."

Fernando Chiffelle, the region's agricultural secretary, congratulated SAG for its work in eradicating the fruit fly.

Over this period, a census was taken to find out the origin of the fly, as well as soil treatments, unloading, and analysis on fruit, looking for larvae.

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