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Tell Secretary Vilsack To Hold All Imported Catfish to a High Food Safety Standard!

The 2008 Farm Bill gave USDA new responsibility for inspecting catfish, and now USDA has to design the program. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has to decide what species of fish are subject to inspection. China, Vietnam, and fish importers are pressuring USDA to exclude some species from the program. We know that there are different production standards for catfish in Vietnam and China, and we could be importing fish that has been produced in filthy conditions with toxic chemicals that aren't allowed in the U.S. We need these imported fish to be held to high food safety standards.

Can you ask Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, to include all the species of fish that restaurants and other sellers commonly market as catfish in the new inspection program?

Please edit the letter below.

Subject:

Your Letter:

I am writing to urge you to design a strong comprehensive program for catfish inspection.  As a consumer interested in the safety of my food, I hope that you will use the new responsibility given to the USDA by the last Farm Bill to design a program that holds domestic and imported catfish to the same standards.

Specifically, I urge you to include all the species commonly marketed as catfish in the inspection program.  This includes the Pangasiidae family, basa, and tra.  If domestic catfish are going to be subject to the new inspection program, the imported fish they compete with should have to meet the same standards.

Lots of the fish consumers eat is served in restaurants or other places where country of origin labeling does is not required, which means that consumers don't have the information they need to figure out where something sold as catfish was raised.  This makes it even more necessary for the USDA's new inspection program for catfish to hold imported products to the same standards as domestic.  To do that, the program needs to cover species raised in other countries as well as those that are raised in the United States.

Sincerely,

Tom Vilsack

United States Department of Agriculture

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