From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Issues with Federal Plans for Inspecting Catfish

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Lisa Shames, Director,
Natural Resources and Environment

Related GAO Work: GAO-12-411: Seafood Safety: Responsibility for
Inspecting Catfish Should Not Be Assigned to USDA

Released: June 2012

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[Narrator:] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's June,
2012. A variety of federal agencies are responsible for overseeing
different aspects of America's seafood safety. A group led by Lisa
Shames, a director in GAO's Natural Resources and Environment team
recently reviewed the issues around the inspection of catfish. GAO's
Jeremy Cluchey sat down with Lisa to learn about what they found.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] To start, can you give us a sense of the current
federal landscape when it comes to who is responsible for the oversight
of America's seafood safety?

[ Lisa Shames: ] Yes. As you know in 2007 GAO listed food safety as a
high-risk issue and the reason for that listing is that it's very
fragmented, 15 agencies oversee federal food oversight including
seafood. For example, USDA oversees meat, poultry, and processed egg
product; and FDA oversees everything else including seafood. And in
addition, you have the National Marine Fisheries Service that for
fee-for-service will inspect seafood processors to make sure that they
comply with federal statute. After we listed food safety in the
high-risk list, the system became even more fragmented when the 2008
Farm Bill carved out catfish from FDA and assigned it to USDA and it's
this new program that USDA is standing up that we're now looking at.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Your team looked at a couple of things related
specifically to catfish inspection. One of these was USDA's decision
that Salmonella is the primary safety threat to catfish. What did you
find there?

[ Lisa Shames: ] Yes. USDA officials told us that they focused on
Salmonella. They did that at the direction of OMB they said, but what we
found overall is that the data that USDA were using was outdated and
limited. For example, the data that they used were compiled back in 1997
and the data showed that there was one Salmonella outbreak, but there’s
no clear linkage that that outbreak was attributed to catfish. Since
1997, seafood processors have had to have hazard analysis plans in
place. These plans are to identify potential hazards and to have actions
in place to try to prevent those hazards from happening. And lastly,
what we know from the CDC is that while Salmonella is a major illness in
the United States, it’s not necessarily from catfish.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] And looking ahead, your team also reviewed USDA's
proposed catfish inspection program, can you talk a little bit about
this?

[ Lisa Shames: ] Yeah, we found that actually the catfish program would
further divide seafood oversight and that presents a duplication of
effort in our view and that duplication comes at a cost. USDA officials
told us that they figured it would be $14 million annually to implement
the program and we thought that there was…that was not a very efficient
use of federal resources for a couple of reasons. First of all, USDA
would require the same hazard analysis plans that FDA now requires. It
could very well be that seafood processors would be inspected by up to
three federal agencies, USDA, FDA and as I mentioned before this
National Marine Fisheries Service. And lastly, FDA about a year ago
received additional statutory authorities through the Food Safety
Modernization Act, which should augment its seafood oversight.

[ Jeremy Cluchey: ] Given this, what is GAO recommending in this report?

[ Lisa Shames: ] GAO actually made a recommendation to congress that it
repeal the provision in the Farm Bill to…that assigned catfish oversight
from FDA to USDA and we made this recommendation because we felt that
the proposed program would not enhance seafood oversight. There have
been no outbreaks from Salmonella and catfish since 1991 and so we
thought that there was not a safety issue there. We also thought that
because the proposed program essentially mirrors the FDA one, that there
is duplication and that federal resources especially in such a
constrained environment could be better directed.

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[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit gao.gov and be sure to tune in to the
next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional
watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.