"Import Alert" For Chinese Seafood Ignored

AP: Holes In FDA's Screening System Allowed At Least 1 Million Pounds Of Suspect Seafood Into U.S.

(AP) 
Normally, the FDA inspects just 1 percent of the cargo it oversees. When goods land under an import alert, however, they are considered guilty until proved innocent: All shipments are supposed to be held until private tests that cost importers thousands of dollars show the seafood is clean. Sometimes, the FDA double-checks those tests in its own labs. Products can be detained for months, irking importers.

A shipment can escape inspection if, for example, a company uses a name or address not on an import alert, Chappell said. That appears to be what happened in one case AP found.

Also, FDA workers who must review hundreds of shipments that flash across a computer screen each day may miss some tagged for testing.

The agency has about 450 budgeted positions for screening approximately 20 million shipments annually of such things as fish, fruit and medical devices. At a congressional hearing last month, FDA employees doubted whether they have the resources to do the job.

Last summer, FDA labs began accumulating evidence that 15 percent of farm-raised shrimp, eel and catfish contained dangerous or unapproved substances. The agency started throwing individual companies on its watch list, and ultimately issued a sweeping mandate that all shrimp, eel and catfish raised on Chinese farms be stopped and tested.

Federal food safety officials said that while the seafood poses no immediate danger, long-term exposure could increase the risk of cancer or undermine the effectiveness of drugs used to fight outbreaks of disease.

The FDA did not tell shoppers to throw away what they had bought; agency officials said they simply had to get control over what China was sending.

Seafood that clears the ports enters a vast distribution system that includes restaurants, wholesalers and brand-name packagers.

The Chinese government and U.S. importers say the FDA overreacted. It would be impossible, importers say, for a person to eat enough seafood to be affected by the trace levels that FDA found of substances such as the antifungal chemical malachite green and the antibiotic Cipro.

The AP reviewed 4,300 manifests of seafood shipments from China compiled by Piers Reports, a company that tracks import-export data, and found 211 shipments that arrived under import alert since last fall.

FDA officials refused to identify exactly which shipments were tested, saying they were too busy to do so.

So the AP contacted importers directly, talking to 15 companies responsible for 112 of the 211 shipments. Eleven said their products were tested; four said the FDA did not bother to stop a total of 28 shipments weighing 1.1 million pounds. Virtually all the shipments entered through ports in the southeastern U.S., including Tampa, Florida, Miami and Savannah, Georgia.

The importer with the most cases was Florida-based Tampa Bay Fisheries.

Chief executive Robbie Paterson said 23 shipments of breaded or dusted frozen shrimp delivered between October and May were not inspected. In rare cases, the FDA removes from its watch list companies that have passed five straight tests. Paterson said he assumed that was why Tampa Bay's shipments went through.

Not so: Tampa Bay's shrimp supplier — the Fuqing City Dongyi Trading Co. — was on the watch list.

Three other companies said a total of five shipments of catfish, eel or shrimp were not stopped and tested.

Like many others in the importing business interviewed for this story, Paterson said he believed that import alerts were completely effective and that Chinese seafood poses no health risk.

FDA officials "are diligently doing the inspections as they see fit," Paterson said.

The expanded testing mandate has rattled China. U.S. importers said they are being told that the government is holding back shipments until tests show they will pass U.S. muster. The disruption has yet to result in any substantial price increases in the United States.

"I don't really know why they conducted the special test on our products," said a woman who identified herself as Miss Lin, a spokeswoman for Shantou Red Garden Foodstuff, which the FDA placed on its watch list in April after finding its dusted shrimp contained nitrofurans, an antibiotic that may cause cancer. "We've been exporting products to the U.S. for many years and we respect their standards and we meet their standards."

[vallel]

good CBS is posting this notice regarding the not very efficient FDA. Make a special investigative assignment and look for employees ( the ones that have to do real work)and investigate the lack of power this agency have to stop violative products to come into the country.

[erasmus6]

Yes, everyone is wasting their time if they think the government is going to do what needs to be done. When the FDA wasn't doing their job to begin with, you can hardly expect anything is going to change when they close up 7 offices.

It is all up to the PEOPLE.

[toldyouso21]

This situation is soooooooo pathetic.
skrew china if they don't know how to do it right.
Shame on the U.S. government for the krap they shovel us.

Posted by rushlimpdrug at 11:20 AM : Aug 08, 2007


No one shovels stuff into a closed mouth. We keep going out and buying this stuff...so why should they stop when the money is still rolling in. Fortunately, no one has ever forced Americans to buy anything. If there is any shame, it should be shame on Americans for not exercising the power of a boycott to effect change in their own government.

From boycotting bad/questionable seafood, to boycotting cheap clothes from China and labor from Mexico--we could stop a lot if we were not too lazy and self centered to do so. Don't like illegals? Stop eating at the restaurants they work at or hiring them to do the work or patronizing places that do?

Don't like outsourcing? Stop buying computers that are now based in India and cars with parts made in Mexico. Scared of bad seafood or toothpaste? Stop buying it? Don't want to inconvenience ourselves--then roll with it and stop complaining.

[toldyouso21]

But the big Bozos in Washington that do nothing but seat in the big offices with air conditioning are using the money destined for Imports operation in big bonuses for them. The system is screwed, because there are too many managers and few field people.
Posted by vallel at 10:17 AM : Aug 08, 2007

Now...the question is, are there any signs of kick back to FDA or USDA officials while they reroute assignments away from seafood and claim lack of resources for their wilful failures to enforce?
the FDA and their field people have been subject to bribes and 'rewards' to allow product and actions of companies to go unchecked or to slip through. More field people will not help, nor more money thrown at the problem.

In America, Congressmen make careers out of lying and stealing and schmoozing and milking the public.

They do it soooo long that they do not have a clue how the rest of us live or have to struggle--we are a theory, a problem to work around while they feather their own nests.

[my2centss]

"The FDA itself admits that this seafood needs inspection, but then doesn't have the capability to inspect it," Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer"

Sounds like another tax to me. Just tack it onto the gasoline, at this point we will not even notice it.

[dzfromsc]

The FDA really is understaffed...believe me, I know.

FDA officials "are diligently doing the inspections as they see fit," Paterson said.
Isn't that thier job?
"...we respect their standards and we meet their standards."
Never have you met our standards.

twylacrat: You're right!

[drinuk]

The FDA are too busy running around on behalf of their Paymasters Big Pharma, banning vitamins and other natural medicines. The priorities of the organisation would be laughable were they not so serious. All we hear is that they are under staffed, the truth is that they could not organise a P i s s Up in a brewery unless someone shoved a few dollars in their wallet.

[rushlimpdrug]

"The FDA itself admits that this seafood needs inspection, but then doesn't have the capability to inspect it," Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer

This situation is soooooooo pathetic.
skrew china if they don't know how to do it right.
Shame on the U.S. government for the krap they shovel us.

[yamuttya]

Economics 101
The sooner you boycott this trash, the sooner they will clean up their disgusting act.
Any questions ??

[nskduke]

Screw China imports.

[twylacrat]

WHO IS LOOKING OUT FOR THE AMERICAN PEOPLE -- ITS DEFINITELY NOT THE B*SH*t ADMINISTRATION. We're building infrastructure in Iraq while ours is falling down. We're making sure Iraq has a democraticlly elected government when WE don't have one. We're building schools in Iraq while ours are failing our children. LET'S TALK ABOUT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE FOR A CHANGE. WHAT ABOUT US?

[vallel]

What do you expect? When there is no money to hire new inspectors to go and inspect or detained this shipments? But the big Bozos in Washington that do nothing but seat in the big offices with air conditioning are using the money destined for Imports operation in big bonuses for them. The system is screwed, because there are too many managers and few field people.