Last month, U.S. Department of Agriculture published the much-anticipated rule for inspecting domestic and imported catfish. The rule stems from a measure in the 2008 Farm Bill that would charge the USDA with inspecting catfish under the agency’s Federal Meat Inspection Act, and inspections would be mandatory.
Around the same time, the GAO released a report on streamlining the food-safety system that identified catfish as an area of “high risk” for “fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement” because food-safety oversight is so fragmented and resources are so scarce. Establishing the USDA catfish-inspection program is expected to cost USD 30 million in fiscal 2011 and 2012.
But on Thursday the CFA said the failure to switch regulation of catfish from the USDA to FDA would be “a giant step backwards in protecting the health and safety of American consumers.”
“Congress moved catfish inspections from the FDA to USDA because the USDA system provides far greater health and safety oversight of catfish production and processing,” said Butch Wilson, the CFA’s newly elected president. “That decision was based, in part, on a previous GAO finding that the FDA inspects only 2 percent of all seafood imported into the United States.”
The USDA has greater authority to conduct on-site safety inspections of production facilities, guarantee accurate labeling and enforce requirements that imported meat, poultry and catfish meet the same health and safety standards as American products, said Wilson.
“Our primary goal is to ensure the safety of our product for the American consumer,” he argued. Transferring regulation of catfish from the USDA to FDA has drawn a lot of criticism from seafood importing and exporting interests, who call the measure protectionist.