Untested seafood slips past FDA

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Aug 8, 2007 | by Justin Pritchard, Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- At least 1 million pounds of suspect Chinese seafood landed on American store shelves and dinner plates despite a Food and Drug Administration order that the shipments first be screened for banned drugs or chemicals, an Associated Press investigation found.

The frozen shrimp, catfish and eel arrived at U.S. ports under an "import alert," which meant the FDA was supposed to hold every shipment until it had passed a laboratory test.

That was not what happened, according to an Associated Press check of shipments since last fall. One of every four shipments the AP reviewed got through without being stopped and tested. The seafood, valued at $2.5 million, was equal to the amount 66,000 Americans eat in a year.

FDA officials stuck the pond-raised seafood on their watch list because of worries it contained suspected carcinogens or antibiotics not approved for seafood.

While no illnesses have been reported, the failings raise serious questions about the FDA's ability to police America's food imports. What's more, the agency is now relying on the import alert system to screen far more Chinese seafood than ever before.

"The system is outdated and it doesn't work well. They pretend it does, but it doesn't," said Carl R. Nielsen, who oversaw import inspections at the agency until he left in 2005 to start a consulting firm.

If the system cannot stop known risks, Nielsen said, how can it protect against hidden dangers, such as the ingredients from China that made toothpaste potentially poisonous and killed dozens of pets earlier this year?

"The FDA itself admits that this seafood needs inspection, but then doesn't have the capability to inspect it," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., an outspoken critic of FDA's food safety record, said in reaction to the AP's findings. "This is an example of government failure at its worst."

China is America's biggest foreign source of seafood, the 1.06 billion pounds it supplied in 2006 accounted for 16 percent of American seafood.

President Bush has asked a Cabinet-level panel to recommend better imported food safety safeguards. Chinese officials have promised to inspect fish farms closely for the use of drugs and chemicals, even as they called the FDA's testing mandate illegal under world trade rules.

FDA officials acknowledged that some shipments slip through import alerts, but said overall they work.

"Any time you introduce a human element into something, I don't think you can necessarily guarantee 100 percent," said Michael Chappell, the official responsible for field inspections.

and labs.

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 proven 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 who depend on volume to generate profits.

"You can't argue with FDA," said Peter Huh, co-owner of Pacific American Fish Co., a Vernon, Calif. company which paid thousands of dollars for tests on 14 of its eel or catfish shipments. "So there's nothing you can do."

To snag suspects from the torrent of goods entering the ports, the agency uses a web of computer codes and paperwork. The system is complex, and imperfect.

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.

The agency is bullish, however, when it targets a product.

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 on June 28 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.

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

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 Cipro, the antibiotic used to treat victims of the 2001 anthrax attacks.