Posted on 04/26/2007 12:57:46 PM PDT by blam
Agriculture Commissioner bans Chinese catfish in Alabama
4/25/2007, 5:34 p.m. CDT
By KATE BRUMBACK
The Associated Press
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Agriculture Commissioner Ron Sparks announced a ban on the sale of catfish from China on Wednesday after antibiotics prohibited in the United States were found in Chinese catfish.
Sparks said 20 samples of catfish from China were collected for testing by the department of agriculture over the last few weeks. Of those samples, 14 tested positive for the antibiotic fluoroquinolones, which the Food and Drug Administration banned from use in food-producing animals in 1997.
"We are sending notice today that we are not going to continue to sit by and let these foreign countries produce their food at a different standard than we ask our farmers to produce by and then send those products in here at a cheaper price," Sparks said.
Agriculture department chemists also tested 13 samples of basa fish from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia, with five of the samples testing positive for antibiotics. Sparks said additional testing is required before a decision is made to ban basa fish.
The samples that tested positive represent about 214,260 pounds of fish that will not be sold. About 300,000 pounds of fish also have been suspended pending further analysis.
Lance Hester, the state's food safety director, said the exposure of fish to the banned antibiotics is not accidental. He said the antibiotics are used to kill bacteria in the water.
Sparks said he will not lift the ban on Chinese catfish until he is convinced the problem is solved — until there is no evidence the forbidden antibiotics are used.
"It's pretty obvious they haven't heard my message from Alabama," he said. "But some way or other we're going to get this message from Alabama to those foreign countries that if you continue to use chemicals that have been banned by the FDA, when we find it, we're going to stop it. It's that simple."
Sparks said he has already been in touch with people in the fish industry in the state who have purchased contaminated fish. He said the department of agriculture will continue to help them test fish.
"We applaud Ron Sparks for taking this step — and it's not an easy step — to protect the health and welfare of the state and the citizens of Alabama," said Butch Wilson, chairman of the Alabama Catfish Producers.
Sparks said he also communicates regularly with agricultural commissioners in other southern states, such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Georgia, which produce catfish, and he expects they "will be reacting and responding accordingly to their state and their state laws."
The extensive testing is expensive, but Joe Basile, a chemist at the department of agriculture's lab in Montgomery, said the FDA has been involved and is bearing much of the cost.
Off to the hog farms with them!...........
Nice catch Ron Sparks. Good job.
This is insanity!
Utah Pigs Quarantined Over National Food Scare
kutv.com
April 24, 2007
Salvaged pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical was sent to hog farms in as many as six states, federal health officials said Tuesday. It was not immediately clear if any hogs that ate the tainted feed then entered the food supply for humans.
Hogs at a farm in California ate the contaminated products, and officials were trying to determine whether hogs in Utah, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Ohio may have eaten the tainted food. Hogs at some of the farms - it wasn't immediately clear which - have been quarantined.
A spokesman for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, Steven Cohen, said in a statement that the FSIS was trying to determine whether the hog farms in the states other than California actually fed the material to their animals.
Larry Lewis, the spokesman for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, did not immediately return a call seeking more information.
Hogs that were confirmed to have eaten the tainted food were processed at a federally inspected facility in California, Cohen said.
"All of that meat is under control at the facility," he said. "It is important to keep in mind this is a small number of farms that may have received this feed."
The urine of some hogs tested positive for the chemical, melamine, the Food and Drug Administration said.
"At this point, I don't have a definitive answer other than to say that the issue is being addressed," Stephen Sundlof, the FDA's chief veterinarian, told reporters when asked if any of the hogs had entered the human food supply. A poultry farm also may be involved, he added.
The FDA also said it planned to begin testing a wide variety of vegetable proteins at firms that imported the ingredients to make everything from pizza dough to infant formula, and protein shakes to energy bars. The ingredient list includes wheat gluten, corn gluten, corn meal, soy protein and rice bran.
Pet food companies have recalled more than 100 brands of cat and dog food since the first reports of animal deaths a little over a month ago.
Investigators have found melamine in at least two imported Chinese vegetable proteins used to make pet foods. The chemical possibly was used to skew analyses that measured the protein content of the ingredients, wheat gluten and rice protein concentrate.
There were no direct shipments of either of the two ingredients to firms that make food for humans or for animals used as food, said Michael Rogers, who directs field investigations for the FDA. A second, related chemical called cyanuric acid also has been found to contaminate rice protein concentrate samples, Sundlof said.
The analyses the FDA plans to begin later this week will look at producers of both food for humans and animal feed, said Dr. David Acheson, the chief medical officer within the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. Acheson stressed that there was no evidence any of the other vegetable proteins had been contaminated, but that the FDA wanted to "get ahead of the curve" and raise awareness among manufacturers.
FDA officials said the hogs were fed salvaged pet food made with tainted rice protein concentrate. The food was given to the animals prior to the products' recalls, Rogers said. Adulterated food cannot be legally fed to either humans or animals, Sundlof said.
Meanwhile, the FDA is sampling for melamine and related compounds in all wheat gluten, rice protein and corn gluten coming into the United States from China.
Also Tuesday, the FDA said another pet food company, SmartPak, had recalled products made with tainted rice protein concentrate. The company said the recall covered a single production run of its LiveSmart Weight Management Chicken and Brown Rice Dog Food.
I hope this will be the first of many bans.
Ahhh yes, the benefits of free trade. Aren't they wonderful! So what's a little case of food poisoning? Get over it you wusses! /s
Am delighted to see this action. His action is twofold; he is protecting Bama consumers as well as Bama’s own catfish producing industry. Smart move.
Noooo! Now it begins! </Negativland>
The Feds are still sitting on their hands.
That’s a lot of imported catfish.
Hehe, was just going to ping you M4K, but you’re already here :)
We’re even importing catfish? This is nuts!
Apparently there’s a catfish shortage.
Give Ron Sparks a medal. Finally someone stands up for American consumers AND producers.
My bf was raised Jewish, and is not fond of pork. He loves seafood though, and I told him that we need to ask questions and read labels carefully, from now on.
I am absolutely disgusted. You know even in New Orleans, they sell CHINESE crawfish in the grocery stores and it’s cheaper than if it came from our own backyard!!!
I’m beginning to wonder if Richard Nixon really did us a big favor by opening up China for trade.
*
I’m giving this article to my brother who eats catfish regularly....
“We are sending notice today that we are not going to continue to sit by and let these foreign countries produce their food at a different standard than we ask our farmers to produce by and then send those products in here at a cheaper price,” Sparks said.
____________________________________
^5 Ron Sparks.
Off to the hog farms with them!...........
_______________________________________________________
Send them back to China and we can get some more of those nice wall plaques made from them.
There's no shortage, there's just too much cost. It's a sad day when we here on the Gulf can't afford seafood caught here. Next time you're in the store, take a look at the prices. I've bought foreign fish in the past, simply cause the stuff caught right here is almost twice the price, but now I'll just do without all of it.
The Singing Trout/Bass?...........
Alabama bans six brands of seafood from China
Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bishop announced a statewide ban June 25 on the sale of six brands of shrimp and crawfish from China after seafood samples taken from Alabama grocery store shelves and seafood suppliers tested positive for a restricted antibiotic.
The shrimp and crawfish were found to contain traces of chloramphenicol, an antibiotic that triggers the rare blood disorder aplastic anemia and is linked to a form of leukemia. The federal government prohibits chloramphenicol in food-producing animals and animal feed products in the United States.
The news was cheered by many shrimpers in south Alabama, who this year have faced high fuel prices and record-low shrimp prices, which they blame on imported competition.
Alabama's ban comes a month after a similar ban by Louisiana. The European Union has banned all imports of crawfish and shrimp from China after detecting chloramphenicol. Alabama's ban does not apply to brands of Chinese seafood that have not tested positive for the antibiotic.
Bishop said the ban applies to Sea Best Raw Salad Shrimp, Sea Best IQF Raw Salad Shrimp Frozen, IQF Frozen Raw Salad Shrimp Sea Best, Sea Best Frozen Whole Boiled Crawfish, Sea Best Whole Boiled Crawfish, and Bernard's Cleaned Peeled Crawfish Tails with Fat.
Bishop said his staff began contacting grocery chains, restaurant suppliers, and cold storage warehouses on June 24, telling them not to sell any more of the banned brands from China until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration can do its own tests to verify Alabama's results. If those tests are positive, the banned seafood will have to be destroyed, he said.
Is he eligible to run for president? (By the way is he a democrat or a republican?)
I tell you food safety is becoming my biggest concern—right there with illegal immigration and terrorism.
I don’t know, but he is working with Governor (R)Bob Riley. Riley has done a GREAT job.
Democrat
The extensive testing is expensive, but Joe Basile, a chemist at the department of agriculture's lab in Montgomery, said the FDA has been involved and is bearing much of the cost.
And, uh, where does the FDA get its money?
And why does it cost so much for domestic catfish? Or any domestic product for that matter? Can we come up with a list?
I’ll start: Land taxes are too high.
Hmmmm—oh well, I still have to give credit where credit is due.
Are there any republicans that are speaking out on this issue? This whole issue should be big news.
Ban all food imports from Communist Red China.
I’ve bought Bernard’s crawfish many times in Louisiana. It’s kind of misleading with a name like Bernard’s don’t you think? You don’t think of it as being chinese.
I’ll add that fuel is too high as well.
“Off to the hog farms with them!..........”
LOL!
The China Card was / is a Trojan Horse.
Not only that—many of their ceramic products (like dishes) are made with lead.
I have called my Senator numerous times, John Ensign, getting ready to call again and he is a veterinarian , can you believe this.
Calling him now, to call for Reid to resign.
What a bunch of wimp asses we have in there.
Repuppies.................
A veterinarian and he kept quiet over all this? What is his problem?
Good work Mr Sparks.
As disgraceful as it is for the Chinese to not care about this stuff, it’s a lot worse that farmers here took the rejected food and passed it on to some other animals to eat. American companies seem to not care either.
I truly hope that all the coverage on this will begin to raise the awareness of the public to the fact that we should NOT be importing foodstuffs that we could easily produce here. This might be a turning point in a lot of ways.
It is disgraceful all around.
But I wonder.
Was this contaminated food passed on to other companies before the pet food recall, or after? Menu foods sat on their information for TWO WEEKS before they decided to do the recall because Iams was going to go ahead without them. What else are we NOT being told.
Do we have to import EVERYTHING?
Heck..we don't need food poisoning terrorism. We'll do it on our own! All in the name of profit.
Disgraceful!
Democrat, Ron Sparks (He has aspirations on the US Senate seat held by Jeff Sessions...not a chance)
Just got off the phone with Senator’s office.
She didn’t know if he has been doing anything about it at all.
Told her he should being a veterinarian and all.
Told her that a lot of people think things are getting out of control with this whole food situation.
She was checking Dingle’s site to see if their was any Republicans working on this.
She said a lot of times you don’t hear of all they are working on, which is true.
Also told her he should be standing behind other Republicans that are calling for Reid’s resignation.
Also laid a few other things on her to tell him, she was very nice and said she would pass all this on to him.
I said I didn’t really think that one person has much say in anything, but I did write to a lot of sponsors for the View and wrote to Barbara Walters about Rosie and if i had one little bit of persuasion of her getting off there, then it was worth it.
She said they do listen.
Call your Senators.
I left my name and address, she said they like hearing what is going on.
We will see.
Hallelujah!
Yes, he has. He is going to be hard to replace. I think Bishop is a Democrat....not positive.
Good for you!
I agree. Did you see the hurricane/disaster plan he put together? Impressive.
I went to a conference in Decatur AL last fall and Riley was the keynote speaker, and an impressive man.
My sis and BIL live in Decatur, fish all the time and eat all the catfish they catch (lots). Of course, I’m not sure the catfish from the Tennessee River system is not polluted.
Mom4kittys, I can’t believe they import crawfish to Lousiana. What is going on in this country?
I lived in Lake Charles for many years and learned to love crawfish while there.
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