US Seafood Plants Ignoring Safety Rules-Report

[Guest guest]

By Julie Vorman

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A majority of US seafood plants

fail to meet federal food safety requirements to

protect consumers from illness-causing bacteria in

fish, a US government office said on Tuesday.

 

The General Accounting Office found that 56% of US

seafood plants either lack or have faulty food safety

checkpoints to identify potential hazards and prevent

contamination.

 

The GAO report, which found the Food and Drug

Administration (news - web sites) (FDA) was often slow

or ineffective in enforcing its rules, is likely to

reopen the congressional debate about whether a single

federal agency should be created to ensure the safety

of all kinds of foods.

 

Currently, the FDA, US Agriculture Department (USDA),

Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) and

the Commerce Department all play some role in food

safety regulation.

 

Meat and poultry plants, which are regulated by USDA,

have scientific checkpoints similar to those required

for seafood plants. The approach typically requires

specific procedures to prevent contamination along the

production line, followed by laboratory tests to

ensure the food is safe.

 

Senators To Scrutinize Fda Rules

 

Two senators said the new report showed the FDA must

do more to inspect, monitor and enforce food safety

rules for seafood plants.

 

``I would not call an inspection system with little

inspection and virtually no enforcement an inspection

system--I'd call it an outbreak waiting to happen,''

said Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, the top Democrat on the

Senate Agriculture Committee.

 

``The bottom line is FDA's inspection system doesn't

adequately protect consumers,'' he added.

 

Senator Richard Lugar, the chairman of the panel,

agreed that while the FDA had made progress in

regulating seafood safety, improvements were still

needed. The Indiana Republican said the agriculture

committee, which has oversight of USDA and FDA, would

take a closer look at the FDA's food safety

activities.

 

Seafood ranks nearly as high as meat and poultry when

it comes to foodborne illnesses reported to health

authorities.

 

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a

consumer group, documented a total of 865 foodborne

illness outbreaks during the past decade, including

230 linked to seafood.

 

The hazard to consumers ranges from a deadly bacteria

found in shellfish, vibrio vulnificus, to natural

toxins that occur in some kinds of fish.

 

Small Firms Still Adopting Rules

 

Joseph Levitt, head of FDA's Center for Food Safety

and Applied Nutrition, acknowledged there was room to

do better.

 

``We made a good start but we have a lot more to do,''

he said in an interview. ``We're going to have more

frequent inspections, more laboratory testing and more

stepped-up enforcement. By the end of the year, we'll

have a much better story to tell.''

 

As a sign of the FDA's tougher approach, the agency

recently won a court injunction shutting down a

Pacific Northwest seafood plant because it failed food

safety rules. The firm produced smoked seafood tainted

with listeria, a bacteria that can prove deadly,

especially for the elderly.

 

A US foodmakers group said the GAO investigation did

not find unsafe seafood, but instead analyzed the

seafood industry's compliance with food safety

procedures adopted by the FDA in 1997. Establishing

safety checkpoints has been difficult and costly for

many of the smallest seafood plants.

 

``This report is not a finding of fundamental food

safety problems associated with seafood,'' said Dane

Bernard, vice president of the National Food

Processors Association.

 

``Smaller companies in particular have been faced with

a challenge in understanding and then meeting the

complex (food safety procedures) established by FDA,''

Bernard said. The FDA also needs more money for

inspectors to check on seafood plants, he added

 

US consumer groups have long pressed for more FDA

inspectors to police food plants.

 

``The FDA doesn't even require seafood processors to

register with the agency,'' said Caroline Smith

DeWaal, food safety director of the Center for Science

in the Public Interest. That means inspectors must

comb through yellow page directories, newspapers and

other periodicals to identify seafood plants before

they can be inspected, she said.

 

The group wants the FDA's annual food safety budget of

about $225 million to be doubled.

 

Other consumer groups said the GAO report showed the

FDA was doing little to prevent fish contaminated with

mercury from reaching consumers. The government

investigators urged the agency complete a ten-year

study of the hazards of mercury in fish.

 

Last month, the FDA issued a consumer advisory

alerting pregnant women that their unborn babies could

be at risk from mercury in seafood.

 

Harkin and consumer groups have argued that the FDA's

top priority is regulating drugs and medical devices,

and that it should shed its food safety unit. They

want Congress to create a single food safety agency.

 

Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, a Democrat, is expected

to introduce legislation again this year creating a

food safety agency. While the Clinton administration

had reservations about such a sweeping move, some

experts see President George W. Bush (news - web

sites) as more sympathetic to a single agency.

 

The GAO report also found that about 30% of US seafood

processors--mostly fishing boats--have been exempted

from the safety checkpoints by the FDA.

 

When FDA inspectors identified ``significant

violations'' of food safety rules, the agency did not

issue warning letters in a timely way, the report

said. Last year, the FDA took an average of 73 days

before they were issued, far above the agency's 15-day

deadline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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