Statement of Catfish Farmers of America, Indianola, Mississippi

Chairmen Levin and Lewis and Members of the Committee, thank you for this opportunity to submit testimony to the Ways and Means Subcommittees on Trade and Oversight.  As a catfish farmer from Yazoo City, Mississippi and President of the Catfish Farmers of America, I am pleased to be able to provide a unique perspective on the safety of seafood imports from Asia, specifically China and Viet Nam.

Catfish Farmers of America was established in 1968 to represent the U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish industry, which is now the largest aquaculture industry in the nation.  Based in Indianola, Miss., Catfish Farmers of America represents catfish farmers, processors, feed mills, research and other entities involved in the industry. The states of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana account for 95% of commercial catfish production in the United States. CFA has over 800 members, located in more than 20 states.  The U.S. catfish industry is a critical component of the agricultural economy in many states and employs thousands of workers – including family farmers – in a region that lacks employment opportunities.  This vertically integrated industry processed well-over 600 million pounds of fish annually prior to the onslaught of Asian imports.  With the multiplier effects as provided by nationally respected economists, the total economic value of our industry was close to $3 billion annually.

The domestic farm-raised catfish industry is very transparent.  By that I mean U.S. farm-raised catfish which are raised for consumer consumption can be traced throughout the production and marketing chain.  The U.S. catfish industry has employed rigorous protocols to assure that any particular lot of catfish can be traced from the consumer’s plate all the way back to the production pond of origin and every step along the way.  The ponds are highly maintained and monitored with only limited use of approved treatment regimes.  The product that we produce is antibiotic-free, safe and healthy.

The American people have grown to trust U.S. Farm-Raised Catfish, and made it a part of their “healthy diet”.  Catfish is America’s sixth most popular seafood and seventy percent of this product is consumed in restaurants.  Furthermore, U.S. Catfish is the number one aquaculture, or farmed fish in our country.

In recent years, the U.S. catfish industry has been seriously threatened by imported frozen fish fillets from Asia.  This problem began with Vietnamese exporters flooding the market with unfairly priced products falsely labeled as catfish.  Our industry was so seriously damaged by these trade practices, that in 2003, the U.S. Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission issued an anti-dumping order against Vietnam. 

However, even with tariffs in place, Vietnam continues to expand its exports to the United States. China has now become a major exporter of catfish. Beginning in 2004, China began to export limited quantities of catfish to the United States, but in late 2006, Chinese export volume surged dramatically. By the end of 2006 China had sent 14 million pounds of frozen fillets of catfish and catfish-like species to the United States.

Catfish imports have increased by 600 percent over five years and in the last year alone, there has been a 304 percent increase from China. This import surge from China has continued into 2007 and by the end of May this year, importers had brought into the US market over 14.3 million pounds of Chinese catfish and like species, more than  the record volume they had imported in all of 2006.  By the end of May, Chinese imports had captured 18 percent of the market (up from only 4 percent for the same period in 2006, and only 2 percent for all of 2005).

The Chinese have made inroads by pricing their fish well below the price of U.S. fillets and by employing banned antibiotics to sustain their product artificially.  On average, in 2006 Chinese frozen fillets of catfish were brought into the U.S. market at prices that were about 33 percent below the price of domestically produced fillets. In 2007, that differential has increased to over 39 percent.  This price differential is the result of not only the very low wage rates in China, but also because the Chinese government has targeted aquaculture as a growth sector.  These factors, coupled with currency valuation practices that are beneficial to exporters, along with China’s lack of enforcement of health and safety standards, has created an extremely difficult situation for our industry.

As it has been widely reported, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) currently inspects less than 1 percent of all imports.  As the representative for the industry, I respectfully suggest the FDA will never be capable of fully assuring the safety of imported catfish.  By its own admission, the FDA has repeatedly claimed that no amount of appropriations can ever assure 100 percent inspection of imports.  While we commend the FDA for its issuance of the recent import alert on seafood from China, that alert has been examined by other Committees in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate and has been found to be inadequate in protecting the consumer.  However, many states are eager to take on the responsibility of inspecting imported catfish.  CFA believes a pilot program between state regulatory bodies and the FDA allowing for state inspection of catfish would better protect the consumer, while allowing for further examination of best practices at the FDA by the Congress.

We believe that FDA should also work more closely with those agencies that do monitor the ports of entry into this country.  FDA’s own testimony shows that with over 365 ports of entry, the FDA does not have the resources to be present at every point of entry, but Customs and Boarder Protection (CBP) maintains a presence at those ports.  CBP has the resources and the database to help the FDA track shipments and importers.  In fact, the USDA works closely with CBP and its import database on meat, poultry and egg shipments entering the United States, while the FDA does not have a similar relationship.  Coordination of FDA and CBP will be a better use of FDA’s limited resources while improving consumer safety. 

As has been said many times over the past few months, “the U.S. cannot inspect its way out” of the food safety situation we are currently facing.  As an industry, we could not agree more.  Despite the efforts of domestic distributors to work with seafood exporting nations such as Vietnam, these seafood exporting countries continue to use unsafe and often dangerous farming practices when it comes to producing catfish.  Repeatedly, traces of antibiotics and carcinogens are found on those shipments of catfish that the FDA is able to detain for inspection.  In fact, Japan and the EU continue to raise concerns about the use of banned antibiotics and malachite green in Vietnamese seafood despite the assurances from Vietnam and domestic distributors that such substances are no longer being used in their seafood production.  We respectfully ask that Congress look to the import safety regimes of other nations, such as the EU and Japan.  In every instance, those regimes demand that imported food meet equivalent safety standards to those required of the domestic industry.  Even our own USDA inspection arm, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) demands verification that exporting countries’ regulatory systems for meat, poultry and egg products are equivalent to that of the U.S. and that products entering the U.S. are safe and wholesome, yet the FDA does not require importing countries of all other food products to meet a U.S. food safety equivalent.  We believe the FDA should work with FSIS to replicate their import enforcement regimes at the FDA.

Consumer confidence in imported catfish will also increase with a requirement of traceability.  By that I mean tracing the product back to its production pond of origin as we as domestic producers are able to do.  This will allow for greater control over the product and elimination of those producers in the import market who are subjecting the American people to unsafe catfish.

Furthermore, the American consumer deserves Country of Origin Labeling in restaurants.  As you well know, Federal law requires that seafood sold in grocery stores be labeled by its country of origin, yet there is no corresponding requirement for fish served in restaurants.  Applying this law to restaurants will better allow the consumer to make educated choices about the foods they are consuming.  It is by no means a cure-all, but a recent poll sanctioned by the Catfish Institute indicated that 96 percent of consumers want to know the origin of the catfish that they consume in restaurants.  Other national polls have also made it resoundingly clear that U.S. consumers are demanding the right to make informed decisions that the food they order is safe to eat. We are not saying that fairly traded catfish should not be imported, but that it needs to be raised in a manner which ensures a safe product that is clearly labeled so that the consumer knows what they are purchasing.

Chairmen Levin and Lewis and Members of the Committee, I thank you for this opportunity to submit written testimony to your Subcommittees.  In this time of heightened food safety concerns, we ask that importers of catfish play by the same rules that domestic producers must play by in order to protect our industry and the American consumer.  This can only be accomplished with the proper support from Congress. I thank you for your leadership on this issue.