October 5, 2007

 

Southern Shrimp Alliance urges stricter rules for US shrimp import

 

 

The Southern Shrimp Alliance has urged the FDA to conform with the rigorous safety systems of the EU, Japan and Canada and bring regulations in line with the USDA's regulation of imported meat, poultry, and egg products.

 

The Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) made the recommendations the week before the Interagency Working Group on Import Safety.

 

Currently, the FDA relies solely on point-of-entry inspection of one percent of imported seafood products as the first and last line of defense, this makes the US an attractive market for contaminated seafood products, the SSA said.

 

The SSA suggested that when EU and Japan close their doors on these contaminated seafood, the natural outlet these suppliers can find is the US, said John Williams, executive director of the SSA.

 

If FDA is less stringent than regulatory authorities in other countries, the US would act as magnet attracting unsafe and contaminated shrimp imports, Williams said.

 

To illustrate the point, Williams quotes a telling figure- After Pakistani seafood was banned by the EU in April this year, the country's shrimp exports to the US jumped from zero in February 2007 to more than 165,000 pounds by June 2007.

 

Currently, the FDA does not require certification of equivalence and inspects only one percent of imported seafood products, the SSA said.

 

Also, the FDA does not quarantine imports at US borders but allows importers to take delivery of even the most suspicious seafood imports, Williams said.

 

In addition, current FDA enforcement is insufficient to prevent port-shopping, in which vessels would seek to enter rejected merchandise at other ports.

 

On the other hand, the EU guarantees equivalence in food safety controls by conducting foreign on-site inspections and certifying exporting countries and individual exporters before importation.

 

The EU also inspects 20 percent of seafood imports, as opposed to the 1 percent in the US. EU authorities also have the power to destroy contaminated shipments, thus preventing them from going into other areas.

 

Besides stricter licensing requirements and heavier penalties for non-compliance, Japan also checks 25 percent of its shrimp imports while Canada checks 15 percent.

 

While in the area of imported meats and poultry, the US has demonstrated it can keep up with standards in the EU, Japan and Canada, FDA did not demonstrate it can do so for shrimp.

 

Besides requiring certification of foreign equivalence, USDA also tests nearly 16 percent of all meat and poultry imports to the US.

 

The SSA said it hopes Congress and the Administration will work together quickly to make FDA function as well as the food safety regimes in other major importing countries so as to protect consumer safety

 

SSA is an alliance of warm water wild shrimp fisheries from eight states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.