Seafood From China Wasn't Screened
By JUSTIN PRITCHARD and ADAM GOLDMAN
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(AP)
A worker moves frozen seafood inside the cold storage warehouse
at the Pacific American Fish... |
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.
But
that was not what happened, according to an AP 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.
No
illnesses have been reported, but the episode raises serious questions
about the FDA's ability to police the safety of America's food
imports.
"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system is outdated and it doesn't work well.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, FDAImports.com. "You can't make the assumption that
these would be isolated instances."
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., a critic of the 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 accounting for 16 percent of all seafood
Americans buy.
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(AP)
Chart shows number of Chinese seafood shipments stopped
or tested in U.S. ports; 2c x 4 inches;... |
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 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.
|
(AP)
Pallets with Chinese catfish fillets are tagged with Food
and Drug Administration red tags marking... |
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.
|
(AP)
Farm-raised eel from China bears a red tag by the Food and
Drug Administration for inspection... |
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 Southeast, including Tampa, Fla.,
Miami and Savannah, Ga.
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."
Associated
Press writer Christopher Bodeen in Shanghai, China, contributed
to this report.
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