The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“USDA CATFISH INSPECTION PROGRAM” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S3050-S3051 on May 23, 2016.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
USDA CATFISH INSPECTION PROGRAM
Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, tomorrow, apparently the Senate is going to have an opportunity to weigh in on the issue of whether it is good policy to allow uninspected, adulterated Vietnamese catfish into the United States. That will be the issue before us in the form of a resolution to disapprove a USDA regulation.
The Senate will vote on whether it is a good idea to expose American consumers to catfish containing illegal antibiotics, heavy metals, and other carcinogens. I think the Senate will once again say that we need to protect American consumers from these harmful contents of imported catfish, and we need to protect them by continuing a new U.S. Department of Agriculture catfish inspection program.
What happened before we had the USDA catfish inspection program? Under previous law, the Food and Drug Administration inspected catfish coming into the United States, principally Vietnamese catfish. What we found out in this program is that only 2 percent of the catfish coming in got inspected. The other 98 percent came through without the Federal Government taking a look at it. What we learned from the information given to us was that some of the catfish coming in did have these harmful chemicals in them. So the farm bill passed by the Congress changed the inspection regime from the FDA to where it is now--the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Under the Department of Agriculture program, almost all of the catfish will be inspected to make sure it is free of these harmful substances.
The people who are trying to go back to the old method of inspection make some claims. They say the new USDA rule is duplicative. They say it is a WTO violation. They say it is costly.
I will tell my colleagues--and I want my colleagues listening in their offices to understand this--there will not be a duplicative program. FDA is out of the catfish inspection business as of March 1 of this year. The only inspections being carried out now are through USDA. So the argument that this new program is duplicative is factually incorrect. You can say it as many times as you want to; that doesn't make it true. There is no duplication.
Furthermore, there is no WTO violation. The equivalent standards are being applied both to imported and domestic fish, so the standards are the same. We just want to make sure they are safe. We are pretty sure about domestic catfish. A lot of it is grown in my State of Mississippi. A lot of it is grown in Missouri, Arkansas, and Alabama. Those catfish farms are inspected. The fish are not caught out in a river somewhere; they are inspected where they are grown and are harvested under very controlled conditions. We just want all fish consumed in the United States to be as safe as domestically produced fish.
Thirdly, they say the new rule is costly. Well, the entire program is going to cost $1.1 million a year through USDA. I would say $1 million a year to protect the American consumers is a reasonable price to pay. It is not costly in the scheme of things.
Let me tell you what we found so far in the brief history of this new USDA program. We found that catfish coming in from Vietnam was adulterated. I can hardly pronounce these words, but I have here a publication from Food Chemical News dated today, May 23. It reports that according to the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, they have already found two shipments that have just come in in recent weeks that were adulterated. This is Vietnamese catfish that the U.S. Department of Agriculture caught that would have been consumed by American consumers in restaurants and would have been bought at supermarkets. They wouldn't let it in. They sent it back. Thank heavens they did because one shipment contained gentian crystal violet, so they didn't allow it to come in. That is the kind of inspection this vote tomorrow will try to stop. I want to keep those inspections. The other shipment that was not allowed in contained malachite green, and it contained enrofloxacin and fluoroquinolone--all chemicals and substances that are prohibited to be consumed in the United States because they are not safe. They contain heavy metals, they contain carcinogens, and they contain illegal antibiotics that we are trying to protect U.S. consumers from.
I will give credit to the authors of this resolution of disapproval: This would somewhat cut the price of fish in restaurants. But I will tell you what. If my colleagues want to foist less expensive catfish that contains heavy metals, antibiotics, and carcinogens off on American consumers, let them have at it. I don't think the majority of the Senate wants to do that in the name of a duplicative program--and it is not duplicative--and in the name of reducing costs when the whole program costs about $1 million a year.
I want my colleagues to be aware that this vote is going to come up tomorrow. It is a very unusual vote. It is a Congressional Review Act vote. Thirty of my colleagues have signed a petition, so it must come to a vote, and it must come tomorrow afternoon. The vote to proceed will take place tomorrow afternoon. If the motion to proceed is agreed to--and I certainly hope it is not--then we will have 10 hours of debate right here in the middle of the week when we should be talking about national defense and all of the issues that really trouble Americans. We have 10 hours of debate, according to the law, on whether the regulation should go forward.
I hope we will simply vote against the motion to proceed tomorrow. That way, under the Congressional Review Act, that will be the end of the matter and the Department of Agriculture can keep inspecting and keep protecting American consumers.
Americans should be aware this is coming up, and my colleagues and their staff should get schooled in this rather obscure issue.
Should the resolution pass, we will have the very unusual and unworkable situation of the farm bill still being the law of the land, of the Department of Agriculture still being the agency in charge of inspections. That will still be the law; we simply won't have a rule allowing that part of the bill to be implemented. So, in effect, since the FDA inspection regime has ended, according to law, we will have no inspection whatsoever. That is my understanding of the result should the resolution of disapproval be approved. I don't think it will be approved. I think we will stand tomorrow for consumer protection and for applying the laws of consumer safety and food safety evenly and across the board.
So I urge a ``no'' vote tomorrow on the motion to proceed.
I thank my colleagues for their attention.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
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