Political Quotes

“I will read a few sentences from the second paragraph of this Safe Food Coalition letter, which is signed by a coalition, including the Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention, the Consumer Federation of America, the Consumers Union, Food & Water Watch, the National Consumers League, and STOP Foodborne Illness. Those groups have formed this coalition, and they say this: Starkly different catfish farming practices in foreign countries, often accompanied by inadequate environmental and food safety standards, raise significant public health concerns. The FDA regulation of catfish did not sufficiently address those concerns. Two percent of all imports were inspected and the others came in without a single look from the government. The letter continues: As the U.S. Government Accountability Office found in 2011, FDA's inspection of imported seafood products was ``ineffectively implemented'' and subjected just 0.1% of all imported seafood products to testing for drug residues. Yet chemical residue violations in imported catfish are rampant. According to testing performed by FDA and the Agriculture Marketing Service, fully 9% of imported catfish products tested positive for the banned antimicrobial chemical malachite green, and 2% tested positive for the banned chemical gentian violet. I will simply say, these people don't have an ax to grind. They don't stand to make a lot of money by selling cheap catfish to the American consumer.…”