Photo by J.E. Theriot
WASHINGTON — The future of a $14 million-a-year catfish inspection program that stands to block imports of cheaper, foreign-raised catfish hangs in the balance as House and Senate negotiators get ready to iron out details of the 2013 farm bill.
The House’s version of the farm bill would eliminate the program. The Senate’s version keeps it. It’s unclear whether it will make it into the final version.
When the last farm bill was passed in 2008, it moved catfish inspections from the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Agriculture Department, which historically only deals with meat, poultry and processed-egg products. The change was based on a USDA report that cited catfish as a salmonella hazard, a determination later questioned by the Government Accountability Office.
After five years and an estimated $20 million spent, the USDA has failed to implement an inspection plan, which critics say is really intended to block cheaper catfish imports from entering the United States, giving domestic farmers an advantage.
“There is no question: Catfish lobbyists and Southern catfish farmers are the only people who benefit from this,” spokesman Gavin Gibbons of the National Fisheries Institute said Tuesday.
Opponents of the USDA program claim the measure benefits only domestic catfish farmers, wastes taxpayer dollars and harms trade relations with foreign catfish exporters.
However, those claims do not fit the purpose of the program, according to Carole Engle, director of the Aquaculture/Fisheries Center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff.
“The current process is clearly not working,” Engle said. “The [impending] USDA provision does not prohibit any imports from coming in. It simply says imports need to meet U.S. standards.”
According to Engel, the FDA does not have the capacity to test a large enough sample to prevent imports tainted with banned substances from entering the U.S. If such a substance is identified, “nothing prevents that boat from going further down the coast to another port,” Engle said.
As a result, Engel said, the importing of foreign fish products without proper inspection is unsafe for American consumers and also negatively affects catfish farmers in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama.
“It’s having a dire effect on jobs and the local economies are suffering,” she said. “The catfish industry is not asking for a ban, it just means that imports would be held to the same standards.”
Even though the inspections provision was granted in the 2008 farm bill the USDA has not established its program and has yet to set a date to implement it.
“Since the proposed rule published in 2011, a core staff has been working on further policy development in anticipation of potential implementation of the catfish inspection program,” a USDA spokesman said recently. “A time-line for the program’s implementation is not available at this time.”
The USDA has spent the bulk of the $20 million made available for the program on establishing an office dedicated to catfish inspection and generating an assessment that outlines the inspection process and how effective it would be in protecting consumers.
The Government Accountability Office stated in an April annual report that repeal of the catfish inspection provision“would avoid duplication of federal programs and could save taxpayers millions of dollars annually without affecting the safety of catfish.”
In the same report, the congressional watchdog said when the USDA does establish a catfish inspection program, it will mirror work by the FDA and National Marine Fisheries Service that is already in place, causing “duplication and inefficient use of resources.”
“It’s an expensive plan. It would be redundant,” said Fran Smith, board member and adjunct fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a public-policy organization dedicated to free markets and limited government.
Multiple efforts have been made to do away with the USDA’s catfish inspection program, which will require $30 million to initially implement, but all have been met with resistance from supporters.
Despite receiving Senate approval in a voice vote last year, an amendment by U.S. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., to eliminate the USDA program was blocked by the chairman and top Republican of the Senate Agriculture Committee. The Senate version of the farm bill passed June 10 without language eliminating the catfish program or any other major food safety measure.
“We have seen far too much of this type of political gamesmanship and obstructionism in recent years,” said Shaheen in a June response to the blocked vote.
A Government Accountability Office report that tracks federal spending says flawed research conducted by the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service determined catfish as a salmonella hazard. The risk assessment focused on a single salmonella outbreak that was not clearly linked to catfish and took place before the FDA instituted seafood regulations in 1997, the watchdog said.
“There is no food safety issue. The GAO said it five times. Even USDA said they couldn’t do a better job in their assessment. It’s a special interest handout,” the National Fisheries Institute’s Gibbons said.
The USDA inspection program and its definition of catfish also would hamper trade with Vietnam, an exporter of basa and tra, two types of Asian catfish that would be subject to stringent standards.
“This would add enormously to [importer] cost and probably take years to implement,” Smith said.
The catfish issue already has proved an uphill battle for legislators and the farm bill fight continues to complicate the issue.
A repeal of the catfish provision was passed by the House Agriculture Committee on May 14 in 31-15 vote. However, as conference on the farm bill Farm Bill begins it is still unclear whether the program will be repealed in the final version of the farm bill.
After the farm bill failed in the House on June 20, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., voiced support for splitting the bill in two, requiring separate votes on farm and nutrition programs. The split farm bill made it through the House on July 11 with the catfish amendment intact and is waiting for committee conference. If the House and Senate approve the compromise version, it will move on to President Barack Obama for consideration.
“We would expect to see the repeal in the farm policy section whether the bill is split or not,” Gibbons said.
The friction over the passage of a House farm bill without food stamp provisions has been a major sticking point for Democratic lawmakers, creating a slowdown in the legislative process.
Extended negotiations on a farm bill as the fiscal year winds down could cause significant changes such as the catfish amendment to be left out as the committee compares the House and Senate farm bills.
“Most of the amendments that would have pushed for real reforms got voted down,” Smith said.