For Immediate Release:
October 4, 2010

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 –The Catfish Farmers of America today urged newly confirmed USDA food safety chief Elisabeth Hagen to enforce a law approved by Congress more than two years ago requiring tough new USDA inspections and regulation of all catfish sold in America.

“With the many food safety problems in America today, the Obama administration is delaying an important law that would provide new protections for the health and safety of consumers,” said Joey Lowery, president of the Catfish Farmers of America. “Congress voted more than two years ago to require USDA oversight of all catfish—imported and domestic. President Obama and his administration have refused to implement the law and safeguard our families.

“As in the current situation with eggs, reports indicate that bureaucratic stalemates are preventing the enforcement of critical food safety regulations,” Lowery said.

Lowery and Carole Engle, an aquaculture expert from the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, were part of a group highlighting food safety concerns in urging Hagen to take action on the law. Hagen recently took over as chief of the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, the agency authorized to move the regulation forward.

The law transfers the inspection and regulation of catfish from the FDA to the USDA, which has more stringent inspection and safety programs. Congress took the action after the Government

Accountability Office reported that the FDA inspects only two percent of all seafood imported into the United States.

“For U.S. catfish farmers, food safety is our highest priority and we welcome stricter USDA oversight of both our domestic catfish and imported catfish,” said Lowery. “Whether a food safety incident results from domestic or foreign fish, the impact is the same: Consumer confidence in all catfish declines.”

Nearly one-third of all catfish sold in America is imported from Vietnam and China, where fish farming environments are far less controlled and the incidence of contamination is much greater than in the United States.

Both federal and state governments have found serious health risks in imported catfish which contain chemicals, pollutants and antibiotics that are banned for use in fish farming in the United States.

For more information contact:

Visit www.safecatfish.com

Joey Lowery
President, Catfish Farmers of America
jlowery@wildblue.net

Molly Moore
molly@sandersonstrategies.com
1-240-475-0590