U.S. Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on Wednesday introduced a bill that would increase the number of inspections performed on imported seafood and limit the number of ports through which seafood could enter the United States to prevent "port shopping."
The bill would also increase penalties on individuals or companies that knowingly mislabel seafood and ban companies or countries that repeatedly do so from exporting seafood to the United States.
The Imported Seafood Safety Standards Act, which would amend the U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, comes just over a year after Vitter introduced a similar bill that stalled in the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
In a YouTube clip posted on Thursday, Vitter said the bill is intended to "combat a flood of imported shrimp and other [seafood] products, which are often tainted and don't meet our safety standards."
"This is much-needed [legislation]," explained Vitter. "I'm talking to leading members of the Senate right now, trying to get these very important provisions included in other consumer-safety bills that will hopefully move through the process this year. So I'll continue to work with [Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's] task force, domestic shrimpers and industry to get this done to, first of all, make sure safety standards are in place and, secondly, to protect domestic shrimp [and] Louisiana shrimp and seafood from unfair and often tainted foreign competition."
The bill is backed by Louisiana Commissioner of Agriculture & Forestry Mike Strain and Louisiana Shrimp Association President A.J. Fabre, among others.
Louisiana trails only Alaska as the United States' leading seafood-producing state, harvesting nearly 900 million pounds in 2008, 9.5 percent of the country's total seafood catch.
As for shrimp, Louisiana represents upward of half of the U.S. Gulf of Mexico shrimp catch. The state harvested more than 55 million pounds of shrimp in 2009.
January 21, 2010
