Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on Tuesday led a parade of voices speaking out against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's proposal to require post-harvesting processing on Gulf oysters, a measure that would effectively ban the sale of the live shellfish for several months a year.
Landrieu and Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) met with two "high ranking" officials at the FDA on Tuesday morning and then addressed the media, accompanied by several members of the Gulf oyster industry.
"Any disease or illness caused by food contamination is troubling. What we seek here is reasonableness," said Landrieu. "A rule like this could have a devastating effect. We stand united in opposing it."
Sen. Vitter said the FDA "didn't immediately change their position" in today's meeting, but he promised to keep a conversation going between the FDA, Congress and the industry. He also didn't rule out legislative action.
"We would be following up with action in Congress and on FDA funding issues in general," said Vitter, who added that he has co-sponsored a bill to counteract this proposal, one that he would "aggressively pursue."
The U.S. oyster industry produces roughly 750 million pounds of in-shell oysters annually, with roughly two-thirds of that produced along the Gulf Coast. Oysters from the warm-water region are known to carry the naturally occurring bacterium Vibrio vulnificus, which can cause serious gastrointestinal illnesses in humans who consume contaminated oysters.
At the biennial Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) in Manchester, N.H., last month, Michael Taylor, FDA's senior advisor to the commissioner, outlined ways the agency plans to reduce occurrences of Vibrio in raw oysters. By the start of the Gulf oyster season in 2011, the FDA proposed requiring validated post-harvest processing methods.
The Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) has said it is "disturbed" by the FDA's efforts to implement post-harvesting controls on live oysters, without its input.
Donald Kraemer, the deputy director for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, informed the ISSC in a 16 October letter that the FDA would be reformulating its oyster policy to include post-harvest processing requirements, such as individual quick freezing (IQF), mild heat and low-dose gamma irradiation.
Mike Voisin, CEO of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, La., said the oyster industry has done a "tremendous amount of education" in the form of consumer advisories to warn at-risk populations of the health risks from eating raw oysters. He said the FDA proposal would risk the industry's future and commercial viability.
The proposal would require about a "quarter-billion [dollars] in investments needed by small, mom-and-pop companies. It doesn't make sense," said Voisin. "We will continue to educate people. We want zero illnesses related to our product."
According to the National Fisheries Institute, Tuesday was a very busy day on the Hill for the Gulf oyster industry. Meetings were scheduled with several members of Congress representing Gulf Coast states, including Vitter, Rep. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Rep. Pete Olson (R-Texas) and Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), as well as a meeting of concerned Washington, D.C., chefs.
November 10, 2009
