New Catfish Inspection Program Complicates Pacific Trade Agreement
“A curious hurdle is threatening to complicate efforts by the United States to
reach a major trade agreement with 11 Pacific nations by the end of the year:
catfish,” reports New York Times writer Ron Nixon in a November 13, 2013,
article describing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) new
catfish inspection program has angered Vietnam, a member of the TransPacific
Partnership and a major exporter of a catfish known as pangasius.
Vietnamese trade officials have apparently written to Secretary of State John
Kerry, the White House and Congress, criticizing the new inspection program
as a trade barrier in disguise.
“And it’s not even a good disguise; it’s clearly a thinly veiled attempt designed
to keep out fish from countries like Vietnam,” Le Chi Dzung, the chief
economic officer of the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, D.C., told the
Times.
Intended to replace the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) catfish inspection program, USDA’s version is more costly but was backed by consumer groups such as Food and Water Watch as well as lawmakers in Southern states, where domestic catfish producers have long claimed that foreign farmers do not follow the same safety standards required in the United States. “The FDA is understaffed and little inspection is done of the fish that comes into this country,” said Consolidated Catfish Co. President and Chief Executive Dick Stevens. “Fish raised in other countries have been found to have drugs in them. We’re just saying everyone should be held to the same standard.”
The Times also notes that USDA recently passed rules requiring all exporters
to set up domestic inspection systems that are equivalent to U.S. ones—“an
expensive and burdensome regulation that Vietnam says is unnecessary for
catfish.” In the interim, however, the new USDA catfish program is already
under siege in the current farm bill negotiations, with some Congress
members holding it up as an example of wasteful government spending and
calling for its repeal.
