Buried in President Obama’s nearly 1,500-page budget released this week are two very specific food safety-related requests. The administration wants to keep the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service from inspecting horsemeat or catfish. The horse slaughter issue, which is extremely contentious, is mentioned a few hundred
Continue Reading Obama's Budget Seeks to Slash Horsemeat and Catfish Inspection

Earlier this month Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran sent a letter to Rebecca Blank, the acting secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce, asking that the Department “vigorously enforce the antidumping order against frozen fish fillets from Vietnam.” The fish Cochran is concerned about is catfish, and his concerns are not
Continue Reading Catfish Industry Flounders Despite Congressional Support

The Senate was hard at work Tuesday considering dozens of farm bill amendments in an hours-long “vote-o-rama” that included repealing a 2008 farm bill provision to create a catfish inspection program at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Unless the House decides that the program — which the Government Accountability Office
Continue Reading Senate Farm Bill ‘Vote-o-rama’ Rejects Catfish Inspection Program