Count strings in a list

#Count number of occurrences of strings in a list

def count_string(list_element,item_list):
    count = 0
    for item in item_list:
        if list_element == item:
            count += 1
    return count

fruit = ["apples", "bananas", "pears", "apples", "oranges", "pears", "apples", "pears", "lime", "oranges"]


fruit_number = count_string("pears",fruit)


print("There are {0} in the list".format(fruit_number))