Food & Water Watch has sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack about the equivalency status of Australia's privatized meat inspection program and the USDA program. Last year, the USDA decided to make the two programs equivalent, despite discoveries of contaminated meat imported from Australia. Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, said in a statement, "documents from USDA and Australian officials reveal that the repeated problems from products coming from Australia in 2012 show that this is a systemic problem and that privatized meat inspection in Australia is not working." The meat was contaminated with fecal material and contents of the digestive tract. The organization also opposes the "Beyond the Border" program, which is establishing … [Read more...]
Group Presses White House for Consumer Protections in Trade Negotiations
A bipartisan group including Congresswoman Rose DeLauro (D-CT), Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), and Congressman Walter Jones (R-NC) asked the Obama Administration to ensure public health is protected as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Free Trade Agreement is negotiated. Two countries involved in this agreement, Vietnam and Malaysia, are seafood exporters and have raised red flags. The group is concerned that seafood imported from those two countries could be contaminated. The letter states, "in Fiscal Year 2012, imported seafood products from Vietnam, the fifth largest exporter of shrimp to the United States, were refused entry 206 times because of concerns including filth, decomposition, drug residues, unapproved food additives, and Salmonella... U.S. Customers and Border Protection … [Read more...]
Food & Water Watch Asks Ag Secretary to Examine Canadian Import Equivalency
Food and Water Watch has written a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, asking him to look into the status of the equivalency determination with Canada regarding importation of beef products. The organization is also concerned with the privatized inspection system in some of Canada's beef slaughter facilities that has "apparently received no formal recognition by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)." The recent huge recall for E. coli 0157:H7 of millions of pounds of beef products manufactured at XL Foods has prompted this letter. FSIS actually alerted Canadian food safety authorities about the contamination at the Sweetgrass, Montana FSIS border inspection station. The USDA never issued a recall in this situation but instead chose to issue a "Public Health … [Read more...]
Chefs: Something’s Fishy About Imported Seafood Traceability
Despite our growing demand for information about where the seafood we eat comes from, Americans seldom get answers when it comes to imported fish and seafood. That’s why a group of more than 500 chefs and restaurant owners are calling on government leaders to require that all seafood in U.S. markets can be traced. Improving traceability will prevent fraud and keep seafood, which is sometimes illegally mislabeled out of U.S. markets, the group says. “Recent studies have found that seafood may be mislabeled as often as 25 to 70 percent of the time for popular species like red snapper, wild salmon and Atlantic cod, disguising fish that are less desirable, cheaper or more readily available,” the group’s letter to government leaders says. “With about 1,700 different species of seafood from … [Read more...]
