Agriculture Commissioner Bans China Catfish Imports In Alabama (Contaminated)

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.

I came across this as I was looking for the catfish article on-line

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.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.