Study Critical of System for Seafood Safety Inspections

More than half of the nation’s seafood companies aren’t following federal food safety rules designed to protect consumers from food-borne illness, according to a report released Tuesday by congressional investigators.

Although the Food and Drug Administration has introduced food safety practices and annual inspections in recent years to what was a largely unregulated business, the General Accounting Office report said the FDA has done a poor job of monitoring the industry and enforcing the rules. The GAO said these lapses have allowed bad fish to reach consumers.

“This report shows that FDA’s seafood inspection system is still not doing the job,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who with Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) requested the GAO investigation.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that seafood is responsible for about 15% of the outbreaks of food-borne illness in the U.S. that have a confirmed source, a rate greater than that for meat and poultry, which are inspected much more rigorously.

Because meat and poultry are consumed at six and eight times the rate of seafood, respectively, the actual number of individual cases resulting from traced outbreaks was much higher--619 cases from meat and 353 from poultry, compared with 108 cases from seafood.

The CDC said 325,000 people are hospitalized and 5,000 die each year from food-borne illnesses, although the vast majority of cases are never traced to a specific source.

Unlike with meat and poultry, the FDA does not conduct mandatory testing of fish processed at the nation’s plants and has no idea if its food safety program is working, the GAO said.

Since 1997, seafood firms have been required to follow Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point guidelines, which identify, control and correct potential hazards, including improper storage temperatures, unsanitary conditions and chemical hazards, such as methyl mercury contamination, which in high levels can cause serious neurological problems.

However, 56% of seafood processing plants failed to meet HACCP standards--largely, investigators say, because they have no incentive to. Seafood plants are inspected just once a year versus once a day for meat packing plants. About half of the time, those visits entailed only a paperwork review because seafood was not being processed during the inspector’s visit and a follow-up visit was not scheduled.

Despite the low level of compliance, only two plants have been subject to injunctions and temporarily shut down. The rest have received a warning letter, usually more than two months after the visit. The GAO report did not name any specific seafood processors. The report covered all aspects of the seafood business, from fresh to frozen to canned.

“It’s more like an industry quality assurance program than a government regulatory program,” said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Still, “the level of compliance is remarkable, given the cost and complexity of the program,” said Richard Gutting, president of the National Fisheries Institute, an industry trade group.

Gutting estimates that HACCP has cost the industry, made up of many small family-owned businesses, $1.1 billion over the last four years and each facility about $40,000 for new equipment and employee training.

Compounding the difficulties of regulating the industry is its diversity. About 350 species of fish are processed in this country and some, such as mahi mahi and bluefish, can produce a naturally occurring marine toxin called scombrotoxin if not properly handled.

In 1999 the FDA analyzed 769 domestic seafood samples (473 of them for biological hazards). Of those, 94 contained hazards such as salmonella, listeria and scombrotoxin.

Perhaps the largest hole in the agency’s safety net is its regulation of imported fish and shellfish, which makes up more than half of the seafood consumed in the U.S.

Seafood brought in from top producing countries such as Chile, Canada, China, Thailand and Ecuador are required to comply with HACCP regulations, either through an agreement with that country’s government stating that their food safety regulations are equivalent, or by inspecting foreign processing plants or seafood products entering U.S. ports.

However, only a handful of large foreign plants are inspected, no reciprocal agreements have yet been struck with other governments, and less than 1% of all seafood imported into the U.S. is tested.

“Seafood is coming in from all over the world and the FDA only has resources to get out to a few plants in a few countries,” DeWaal said. “Congress needs to give FDA a lot more resources to hire inspectors, run [mandatory] microbial sampling programs and actually monitor conditions in the seafood industry.”

FDA officials say the report echoes the findings of their own internal investigation. They say they are already moving to tighten oversight by requiring two annual inspections instead of one. They also say they will begin testing for pathogens and will measure the effectiveness of their seafood safety policy.

“Most of the firms are meeting several parts of the regulation, but not all of it,” said Joseph Levitt, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “What we are trying to do is move them up all the way across the board.”

However, experts say, it lacks the funds to do that.

Although Congress provided $267 million last year for FDA’s food programs--a $32-million increase over the previous year--the rising number of imports has strained these resources. More inspectors are necessary, they say, if the agency wants to improve its record.

The GAO also recommended that Congress enact legislation that would require all seafood processors to register with the FDA so inspectors could more accurately monitor the industry, which is believed to be much larger than the 3,600 firms that the FDA inspects.

The report says inspectors are forced to identify new seafood firms by such methods as checking phone books, newspapers, magazines and consumer complaints.

Seafood industry officials say most operators welcomed the HACCP guidelines and are scrambling to comply with them. However, they counter that of the firms not in compliance, 30%--mainly firms storing and repacking fish--were told they did not need a HACCP plan because there was no likely hazard.

However, GAO’s review of FDA reports showed that some facilities experienced trouble keeping seafood at proper temperatures, leading the GAO to believe it would be hard to rule out a hazard.