In the heart of catfish country the Editorial Board at Alabama’s Aniston Star newspaper has weighed in on the catfish controversy. And quite frankly we agree with a lot of what they’ve written.
They note that domestic catfish producers who’ve lobbied for a change in regulatory agencies have not gotten a safer product from their efforts. In fact they’ve gotten a “convoluted system” that is a “classic case of waste and duplication” for which “American taxpayers will get the bill.”
We agree, Aniston Star.
Switching regulatory agencies won’t change the fact that Americans aren’t getting sick from domestic catfish or its imported competition. It won’t change the fact that the CDC calls catfish a “low risk” food. It won’t change the fact that the Government Accountability Office has twice called out this special interest regulatory agency shopping as wasteful. And it won’t help small business who will be saddled with even more regulatory burden… not to mention the tab.
The Aniston Star hit the nail on the head when it writes that it’s, “time to go back to the drawing board on this one.”
Catfish and consequences: U.S. consumers need protection
by The Anniston Star Editorial Board Anniston Star
Mar 26, 2011
In an effort to protect the health of consumers and protect a domestic industry — you can decide which was the primary motive — U.S. catfish farmers recently lobbied for a law they thought would cut down on competition from foreign imports.
They got the law they wanted.
They also believed foreign importers were using antibiotics and other substances banned in this country.
But what catfish farmers really got was a convoluted system whereby catfish that traditionally was inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (it is catfish “farming”) would now be inspected by the Food and Drug Administration (it is food).
FDA inspections are more stringent; therefore, what it inspects would be safer, and its requirements are more costly, which would drive foreign catfish off the market.
Unless, of course, the foreign catfish really isn’t catfish.
In 2002, U.S. farmers were successful in getting a law passed that prohibited Vietnamese exporters (the United States’ biggest competition) from labeling their catfish species — pangasius — as catfish.
That’s where the law of unintended consequences kicked in.
Now there are two agencies — the USDA and the FDA — inspecting seafood. The FDA inspects catfish. The USDA inspects the rest. So there is a duplication of services and, naturally, additional cost — $30 million spent on what a recent government audit called a classic case of waste and duplication. Certain lawmakers in Washington want the program overturned.
“It’s everything that’s wrong about the food-safety system,” David Acheson, a food-safety consultant and former assistant commissioner at the Food and Drug Administration, told The Associated Press. “It’s food politics. It’s not public health.”
If that weren’t bad enough, if the imported catfish is not catfish, as the law seems to suggest, then the only catfish being held to stricter standards will be domestic catfish, which, according to the law, really is catfish.
So, American catfish farmers will not get the protection they want. American consumers will not get the protection they want. And American taxpayers will get the bill.
It is time to go back to the drawing board on this one.
