U.S. To Stop Some Chinese Seafood Imports

Shrimp And Catfish Are On List Of Farm-Raised Fish That Have Tested Positive For Unapproved Antibiotics

(CBS/AP)  Farmed seafood joined tires, toothpaste and toy trains on the list of tainted and defective products from China that could be hazardous to a person's health.

Federal health officials said Thursday that they were detaining three types of Chinese fish — catfish, basa and dace — as well as shrimp and eel after repeated testing has turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.

The officials said there was no immediate health risk and stopped short of ordering an outright ban.

Each year, the U.S. imports 150 million pounds of shrimp from China, a $300 million annual market, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr. Now Chinese "farm-raised" shrimp is off-limits and future imports will be blocked unless suppliers can show the seafood is clean.

The Food and Drug Administration announcement was only the latest in an expanding series of problems with imported Chinese products that seemingly permeate U.S. society.

Beyond the fish, federal regulators have warned consumers in recent weeks about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires, and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China.

The New York Times reported today that approximately 900,000 tubes of tainted Chinese toothpaste has shown up in prisons, juvenile detention centers and hospitals in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, including some serving the general population.

State officials in Georgia and North Carolina said no illnesses have been reported, and the toothpaste in question is being replaced with brands not manufactured in China.

China, meanwhile, insisted Thursday that the safety of its products was "guaranteed," making a rare direct comment on spreading international fears over tainted and adulterated exports.

FDA officials said the levels of the drugs in the seafood was low. The FDA isn't asking for stores or consumers to toss any of the suspect seafood.

"In order to get cancer in lab animals you have to feed fairly high levels of the drug over a long term," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection. "We're talking not days, weeks, not even months but years. At these levels you might not reach that level, but we don't want to take a chance."

He added, "We don't want to be alarmist here. ... it's a low likelihood."

The FDA said sampling of Chinese imported fish between October and May repeatedly found traces of the antibiotics nitrofuran and fluoroquinolone, as well as the antifungals malachite green and gentian violet. Of particular concern are the fluoroquinolones, a family of widely used human antibiotics that the FDA forbids in seafood in part to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to these important drugs. The best-known example is ciprofloxacin, sold as Cipro, which made headlines as a treatment during the 2001 anthrax attacks.

The chemicals are used to help shrimp and fish survive in squalid, overcrowded fisheries along the coast of China, reports Orr. Many European countries have long-banned the chemical-laced fish.

The FDA will allow individual shipments of the five seafood species into the country if a company can show the products are free of residues of these drugs.

"This action will put a hold on the products of concern at the port of entry. This shifts the burden of proof back to the importer to prove to us that it is safe," Acheson said.

China is the third-largest exporter of seafood to the United States, according to the FDA. More than half of its global seafood exports are farmed. But only about 5 percent of farmed Chinese fish is inspected by the FDA, agency officials said.

The use of drugs in foreign fish farming operations has long been a concern of federal and state regulators. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi recently banned imports of catfish from China after tests detected antibiotics not approved for use in humans.

"Clearly the addition of these drugs, it's a deliberate event," Margaret Glavin, the FDA's associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, told reporters. "If they stop adding them, the problem is going to go away."

The FDA acted after finding problems with 15 percent of the Chinese seafood it tested. Glavin said the FDA also has found companies in the Philippines and Mexico using the drugs and has issued similar import alerts for those firms' products.

[pepperp1]

Alright Congress country of origin listed on all food products the market can decide, right.

[donteplays]

maybe i'm just a tad too quick to judgement, but it sounds to me as if china is covertly to terrorize america. i say we bomb them back to the stone age president ******! LMAO

[hypnotoad72]

If these products were somehow regulated, would these incidents drop in number?

[oakishpines]

if folk pay restaurants to make folk pay for lunch and charities to feed folk for free: do they expect restaurants to inhuvanely starve the hungry in a world that throws away more food than is needed to feed the world?

if folk vote to be taxed at gunppoint, does that mean they expect to be forced to feed the best folk to cram trillions of dollars of pills down the throats of the imbalanced or scare immigrants into stacks of twenty per closet or fill up prisons with poor blacks or concentrate decaddesof heavy warfare on a particular people of a particular sections of the globe or force clothes on tiny naked kids or big old kids or verbally abuse the obese or challenge the optionjs of homos or starve and censure the lazy ignorant or profane or force paid cavity searches on those who get paid to do cavity searches for pleasure or to pursue, incognito, enemy soliers through school hallways or to ensure 99 plus % of all spankings go to kids age five and less or or or or ?

for each dollar spent and each law passed for morality and security, how many infants and toddlers and other kids age five and less suffer torture and death? and how many soldiers?

does the media stop owing a voice to people when they become enemies of a government? does the media start owing a voice to people when they become friends of a government? are utilities of people by people regardless if government is or is not?

[Syndicate]

All these recent chineese problems remind me of the Tom clancy novel "Debt of Honor". This was the book that used an airliner to take down the capitol building. In the book the US goes to war With Japan and proceeds to kick their *****. Part of the escalation to War is the Banning of Japanese goods due to "SAFTEY CONCERNS"

[erasmus6]

"i say we bomb them back to the stone age..." posted by donteplays

Normally I would disagree with such tactics but in this instance I think I agree with you.

I mean what are you going to do with people that choose to poison us and our animals? People that abuse their animals? They are not going to change. So my vote is to blow them out of the water! :)

[dan9111]

Yaaaaayy! Awwwsome! They should ban everything that is SAFER than cigarettes. Apparently "big fish" did not contribute enough campaign contributions to American politicians.

[ladyelec]

Bomb them back to the stone age? Why not just quit buying anything and everything from there? I hope you were planning to enlist first. Otherwise the people we send over that dies or the people we kill is someones brother, sister, mother, father, aunt, uncle and so on. If their economy crashes, it would get the word out just as easy as a bomb!

We should also put a ban on our imports to them. The price of steel has gone sky high and is hard to get just because they are buying all they can get. This affects everything, in the electrical world, you could order a transformer one month and get the next, now it takes almost a year to get one! Let a major storm take several out, and in emergencies they get theirs first, pushing your power back even farther.

[ubrew12]

Gee, the FDA's been empowered to do what its supposed to. That sure signals a sea-change in the Bush Administrations approach to governance. What's next, the SEC going after corporate inside-traders? The EPA actually checking emissions from new power plants? A boss at NASA who actually takes Global Warming seriously?

Careful, Bush, or people will get to like this newer, safer capitalism and the corporations can't have that!

[jdubs63]

Oh my what is NEXT????????

[radiob-2009]

Each year, the U.S. imports 150 million pounds of shrimp from China, a $300 million annual market, = $2.00 a lb. and the store price is $6.50 to $12.00 a lb. Quite a markup.

[gmond]

I think oakishpines had fish for dinner.

[taylpatr]

We don't even make our own steel anymore. Now we're depending on someone else for everything. Mark my words, this global one-market world we've let these huge companies create for us is going to be the death of our freedom. What's going to happen when all these countries that are supplying us with all of our consumables decide that they've had enough of our bull**it?
We saw what happened in New Orleans after Katrina. This will be the excuse they use to enact marshall law. You better get ready.

[incog-nito]

Speaking of tariffs, why is it that Americans are sold on "free-trade" and "globalization", while other countries routinely slap tariffs on our exports? As an example, Japan puts a heavy tariff on U.S. autos in order to protect their manufacturers. This is why we run a trade deficit with just about every country we trade with.

[erasmus6]

"Why not just quit buying anything and everything from there?" posted by ladyelec

Well that would be just fine and dandy if everybody did it but a lot of people are just too lazy. They will b-i-t-c-h and complain and still do nothing about it.

Also just because it says it is made in the U.S.A., doesn't make it so. The ingredients could be from China.

Maybe if the FDA would get some people with brains in their head and stop everything from China from coming into the country, but we know that ain't going to happen.

SO, I still think that bombing them might be the best way to go!:)

OR like I suggested in another article, we should demand our grocery stores to know what is in our food. If they don't know if the ingredients for a particular food hasn't come from China, then they need to find out or we don't buy. They will make it their business to find out if they don't want to lose money.

[rushlimpdrug]

vivaviva80 - you funny lady- you go home now?
you take oakishpines with you- go now - be fine you go home now please thank you

[pwrslm]

once upon a time, walmart advertised US Made product, alot

but not since clinton dropped the chinese trade barriers

now we see them pulling chinese crapola off the shelves because its poison....

[pwrslm]

"Today we take a major step toward China's entry into the World Trade Organization and a major step toward answering some of the central challenges of this new century," Clinton said in a bipartisan White House ceremony Tuesday afternoon.
Clinton signs China trade bill
October 10, 2000

The worst president we ever had. Bush might be in hot water because of Iraq, but Clinton sold us down the river for a few bucks on his and his wifes election campain....

[ladyelec]

taylpatr, we do make our own steel, do a search! We just export most of it. I'm working on a government project and they are tough on wanting all American made products. As it should be.

[bombadil4]

As our food supply becomes less local and under the control of giant corporations anxious to squeeze out the last penny of profit, we will see more problems like we've seen recently. That Walmart parking lot across the street may well have once been a family farm forced out of business years ago by development or by idiotic inheritance laws. Now we have to hope some anonymous farm worker doesn't decide to go to the bathroom on spinach plants he's picking because his employer doesn't want to pay to provide bathrooms for the field workers. Here's an idea: dig up that useless lawn out back and grow some vegetables of your own.

[weareone2]

Study history. Greedy business men everywhere, including the U.S., do the same thing when they can get away with it. Why do you think such agencies as the FDA were created in the first place? In just the last year or two, we have learned that our own drug companies have been marketing medicine that they knew was killing people, and they were hiding the test results.

[cpaide]

Concerned about China importing some bad shrimp? How about Mexico and their human imports?

The Illegal Immigration Invasion

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/300107Immigration.htm

A truthful documentary showing the people that deal with the Illegal Immigration Invasion upfront and on a daily basis. Watch what the mainstream media WILL NOT show you!!! Like hundreds of illegals streaming across the border into the back yards of U.S. Citizens while the government hinders citizens from protecting their own property.

Note: if FACTS are a problem for you, don't watch this.

[erasmus6]

Unsuppressed

You left me a message on "China defends Safety of it's Exports" which is now closed for comments. Don't know if you will read this.

"So yeah you can say that the Chinese are "SICK" people, but if they are "SICK" THEN WHAT DO YOU CALL AMERICANS??? posted by Unsuppressed

I am not American. Some Americans may be SICK but nothing like the Chinese.:)