July 7, 2011

 

US discovers banned chemicals in imported fish

 

 

Imported fish that are tainted with chemicals not permitted in the food supply are being sold in the US.

 

Three American fish importers pleaded guilty earlier this year in Mobile, Ala., to federal felony charges of mislabeling fish and seafood.

 

Their illegal haul included more than 120,000 pounds of imported fish, brought in to Mobile and Seattle, that tested positive for the suspected human carcinogen malachite green, an antifungal agent, and for an antibiotic that US authorities also prohibit for use on fish that people consume.

 

Over the past 12 months, officials in Tennessee, one of the few states doing testing, found evidence of a prohibited substance.

 

Alabama, Georgia, Arkansas and Florida also turned up the same in recent years while screening imported fish.

 

How much tainted fish might end up on plates in restaurants or homes is unknown, but one Alabama official said it is coming into the country despite a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) effort to block such shipments.

 

"I can tell you right off the bat that 40% of the imported fish we test is positive for banned drugs that are not safe for human health," said Brett Hall, deputy commissioner for the Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries.

 

The US Government Accountability Office issued a report in April saying improved FDA oversight is needed of imported seafood, with recommendations to better leverage limited funding.

 

However, no imported shrimp samples have shown a problem.

 

The US today imports almost 85%of its seafood, and about half of it is from aquaculture, which frequently uses antibiotics to control disease.

Most of the seafood comes from China, Thailand, Canada, Indonesia, Vietnam and Ecuador.

 

When the EU tightened its standards on what was acceptable, the US market began to be flooded with seafood that did not make the grade there, said John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance in Florida.

 

"When you have this amount of product coming in that could contain illegal chemicals, it has an effect on our prices and consumer safety, too," he said. "We became a dumping ground for all seafood rejected by the EU, Canada and Japan."

 

Improvements have been made with the phasing in of a food safety modernisation act that took effect in January, but more are needed, he said.

 

The handful of states that inspect imported fish do it mainly to protect local fishing industries from what they regard as unfair foreign competition. The others rely on the FDA to protect consumers.

 

For its part, the FDA said that the presence of banned drugs in imported fish is a risk they are actively trying to manage and the agency defends the job it is doing.

 

Inspections are conducted at processing companies, and sampling is done at ports and when fish have reached the market, said Douglas Karas, FDA spokesman.

 

Companies that are violators are red-flagged for closer scrutiny.

 

"This will not protect against all possibilities, but we feel we have a strong system because we have a lot of measures working together," Karas said.

 

Also, very small levels of substances can be detected that would be of greatest concern in the case of long-term exposure, he said. Still, new sampling protocol is being developed to help.

 

"It is very valuable to have state agencies doing testing as well," he said.

 

Ted McNulty, director of the aquaculture division of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, has little confidence in the federal system largely because of the amount of actual sampling done.

 

"When you are not checking but 1% of what is coming into the country. If a load is rejected, they can just go out and put it on another ship, bring it in and they have a 99% chance of not getting caught," he said.