August 20, 2020 — A crowdsourcing platform, HeroX, launched an initiative on Thursday, 20 August on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find innovative solutions to keep blue-green algae from wreaking havoc on catfish farms.
According to the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service, catfish exposed to the algae can develop an off-taste. If found, farmers will often delay harvesting their stock for months in an attempt to get a better-tasting fish to market.
August 3, 2020 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is asking catfish suppliers to submit bids to supply 380,000 pounds of catfish by 11 August.
The raw, unbranded catfish fillets will be used for the National School Lunch Program and other Federal Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs.
May 8, 2020 — With the global food supply chain under stress, President Trump’s executive order Thursday will help reduce pain in the grocery checkout line—and also strengthen U.S. food production against foreign competition.
The order creates an administrative trade task force to find new markets for American seafood products and identify unfair trade barriers. It also supports industry research, removes unnecessary regulations on commercial fishermen, and streamlines the aquaculture permitting process.
These reforms will allow producers to make better use of the country’s ample resources. The U.S. has one of the world’s largest exclusive economic zones, a vast area of ocean in which we have sovereign rights over natural resources. But more than 85% of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported. U.S. fish farms produce only $1.5 billion a year, compared with $140 billion in China. Much foreign seafood comes from fish farms in countries that often fail to meet international standards on health, labor and the environment. Many of China’s catfish and tilapia swim in shallow pens with low oxygen levels, polluted by their own waste along with improperly used antibiotics and fungicides. Farmed fish in South America routinely suffer from infectious anemia, algae blooms and sea lice due to poor biosecurity protocols.
The Trump administration wants to protect American consumers from those unhealthy practices, and American aquaculture is the gold standard. Consider the sleek, silvery and delicious Kanpachi—raised in the deep blue waters off Hawaii’s Big Island, inside high-tech submerged pens developed through American innovation. Hawaii’s cutting-edge ocean farms are subject to the highest environmental standards: The fish are raised in pens with healthy oxygen levels and fed sustainable feed. If American aquaculture is allowed to grow to its full potential, it can help revive domestic fish processing, halting the long-running trend of plants moving to China.
President Trump’s executive order creates a task force to enact policies that encourage fair and reciprocal trade for America’s seafood industry, and strengthens enforcement of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. The order affirms that the U.S. will continue to hold imported seafood to the same food-safety requirements as domestic products. And it removes many burdensome regulations on commercial fishermen.
July 29, 2019 — Recalls of imported catfish continue in the United States as some importers say they are unaware that the United States Department of Agriculture is now overseeing catfish imports.
In the latest case, Premium Foods USA in Woodside, New York, is recalling approximately 76,025 pounds of various frozen catfish products that were not presented for import re-inspection into the U.S, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a press release.
July 9, 2019 — U.S. seafood groups are lauding an updated government guidance that encourages pregnant and breastfeeding women and children to eat more seafood.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is updating its 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released in 2017, which recommends that Americans eat at least eight ounces of seafood per week, based on a 2,000-calorie diet. While FDA did not increase the amount of seafood adults should eat, it is emphasizing the nutritional benefits – particularly to pregnant and breastfeeding women as well as children – of eating at least eight ounces of seafood weekly.
The agency also aims to help consumers who should limit their exposure to mercury choose from the many types of fish that are lower in mercury – “including ones commonly found in grocery stores, such as salmon, shrimp, pollock, canned light tuna, tilapia, catfish and cod,” the FDA said in a press release.
However, “it is important to note that women who might become pregnant, or who are pregnant or breastfeeding – along with young children – should avoid the few types of commercial fish with the highest levels of mercury listed on the chart,” FDA said.
June 4, 2019 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released the results of a wide-scale study investigating the presence of so-called “forever chemicals” in U.S. supermarket food.
The FDA found levels of per- and polyfluoroalykyl (PFAs) and other fluorocarbon resins – which are grease-proofing agents used in non-stick cookware, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags and numerous other foodservice and food retail applications in many foods, including seafood – in market basket sampling done at grocery stores and supermarkets in three undisclosed U.S. cities in the mid-Atlantic region.
The FDA found PFAs at levels ranging from 134 parts per trillion to 865 parts per trillion in tilapia, cod, salmon, shrimp, and catfish, as well as numerous meat products, according to an FDA presentation at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in late May, the Associated Press reported.
FDA spokesperson Tara Rabin told the AP that her agency rated PFAs as “not likely to be a human health concern,” but the levels of chemical contamination found in the seafood tested were more than double the FDA’s recommended 70-parts-per-trillion limit for safe drinking water.
May 30, 2019 — A Californian frozen seafood importer and supplier has asked stores and shoppers to return two different types of frozen fish over concerns for food safety.
The move came on May 28 after the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) decided to recall 160,020 pounds of fish products imported by the Los Angeles-based Richwell Group because the items were not presented for import re-inspection into the United States.
The affected catfish, or Siluriformes, products include different weights of packages containing two and three pieces of frozen headless Yellow Walking Fish as well as 14 ounce packages of wild caught, frozen, headless, and cleaned Mystus Fish.
March 12, 2019 — Seafood fraud is prevalent in the United States, according to a new investigation that finds 20 percent of the fish we buy may be mislabeled.
A nationwide investigation by ocean conservation group Oceana tested more than 400 seafood samples from 250 locations, including restaurants, small markets, and big chain grocery stores. Oceana found one in five of the fish were mislabeled, and an even larger one in three businesses sold mislabeled seafood.
Oceana tested popular seafood between March and August 2018. It found that the most frequent mislabeling turned up at restaurants and small markets (26 percent and 24 percent, respectively), while only 12 percent was mislabeled at larger grocery store chains. The investigation uncovered imported seafood being sold as regional favorites, leading customers to believe the seafood was local. It also found vulnerable species mislabeled as more abundant species. And some fish was also given generic labels like “sea bass” and “catfish” which Oceana says disguises lower-value species or masks health and conservation risks.
March 7, 2019 — The rash of wild and farmed catfish recalls in the United States since the beginning of this year may be caused by confusion over which regulatory agency oversees catfish inspections.
More than a year after a controversial regulation shifting inspections of all siluriformes (catfish) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) went into effect, many catfish importers – and some domestic suppliers – remain unaware of the change, sources told SeafoodSource.
In addition, FSIS “discovered a lesser known species of siluriformes fish (sheat) in commerce without FSIS inspection, resulting in a recall,” Buck McKay, public affairs specialist with FSIS, told SeafoodSource.
“Working with our federal partners at Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the FDA, FSIS identified additional recent shipments of this fish imported by other companies resulting in two additional recalls,” McKay said.
FSIS identified a fourth product in commerce while performing effectiveness checks for one of the recalls.
As a result, five importers were forced to recall thousands of pounds of catfish that were not presented for re-inspection by FSIS. The agency did not find a food safety risk with the catfish.
February 7, 2019 — A United States importer is recalling more than 55,000 pounds of catfish from Vietnam.
City of Industry, California-based Richwell Group, Inc. – doing business as Maxfield Seafood – is recalling around 55,300 pounds of frozen Sheat catfish products that were not presented for import re-inspection into the United States, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) said in a press release.
The catfish products, imported from Vietnam on various dates from April 2018, through December 2018, were distributed to retailers nationwide.
The recalled products include Maxfield Seafood SHEAT FISH CA TREN KET and 14-ounce clear bag packages labeled Maxfield Seafood SHEAT FISH CA TREN RANG.
The problem was discovered on 30 January, 2019, during FSIS surveillance activities of imported products at the distributor’s facility, FSIS said.