FDA should keep close eye on seafood reaching our tables

FDA should keep close eye on seafood reaching our tables

The Food and Drug Administration appears to be on the verge of taking action that would, in effect, outsource the inspection of seafood being imported into the United States from China to the Chinese government or its designees.

Among those raising the alarm about this action are American fish producers, especially the catfish industry in the southern United States.

We can’t say we blame them. Imagine what the reaction would be in Ohio or Michigan if China got to export cars to the United States with Chinese certification as their gas mileage or pollution controls or crash-worthiness. It wouldn’t be a little back-burner story getting virtually no attention. Forces more powerful than some catfish farmers would be making sure of that.

But outsourcing the inspection of seafood should be every bit as big a deal as our hypothetical car story.

Almost everyone eats fish or shrimp from time to time, and some people eat a lot of it.

The FDA’s job is to protect Americans against ingesting contaminated food or dangerous drugs. Regrettably, for much of the tenure of President Bush, the FDA’s role (and that of the Consumer Products Safety Commission) was soft-pedaled. The results were predictable. In the case of consumer products, we saw children’s toys decorated with lead-based paints getting onto U.S. toy shelves. In the case of seafood, as USA Today reported, the FDA restricted imports of five types of Chinese-raised fish in June 2007, saying many contained chemicals the U.S. doesn’t allow in the fish we eat.

Impressed by improvement

In the year since, China’s government and seafood producers have stepped up testing and safety controls, and the percentage of shipments testing positive for the drugs has dropped from about 25 percent to less than 6 percent, Don Kraemer, deputy director of the FDA’s Office of Food Safety, told USA Today.

So the FDA is making plans to stop its on-site testing and rely on the Chinese to police their own operations. It has already done so with one Chinese shrimp producer.

Our neighbors to the north, Canada, are apparently less trusting than we and continue to keep Chinese seafood imports on their watch lists, including that from the producer the United States has given an exemption.

In recent months the Bush administration has actually done some rebuilding at the FDA, filling more than 500 jobs that had been allowed to be vacant after people left or retired and hiring people for 770 new jobs. But the lion’s share of the new hires will go to the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, which assesses new medications and monitors the safety of drugs on the market. That’s important work for the FDA to do.

But protecting the nation’s food supply is also important, especially against the importation of fish that could contain harmful chemicals (including mercury), alarming levels of antibiotics that are used to treat the fish against disease and various pathogens.

Congress should not sit by while the FDA lessens its role in protecting the nation’s imported seafood supply. It should demand that the administration use the money that Congress has appropriated to the FDA for the purpose for which it was intended: to protect American consumers.