GAO report urges collaboration

A U.S. Government Accountability Office report released on Friday said federal agencies are not doing enough to prevent economic fraud in the seafood industry.

The report said the agencies - the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service and Customs and Border Protection - do not effectively collaborate by failing to identify a common goal, establish joint strategies or agree on responsibilities. For example, each agency has its own laboratories for determining seafood species and uses different methodologies for species identification.

According to the report, NMFS and CBP are active in detecting and preventing species substitution, short weighting and other forms of seafood fraud, but the FDA's priority is food safety and the agency commits minimal resources to preventing seafood fraud.

"There are folks inside the FDA who are committed to ferreting out this type of thing but simply aren't given the resources to do the job," said Lisa Weddig, secretary of the Better Seafood Bureau, an independent organization formed in 2007 to combat seafood fraud.

"The seafood community does have a responsibility to address its own problems and we are pleased to see the GAO publicly recognize our efforts," said Weddig, who's also director of regulatory and technical affairs for the National Fisheries Institute. "But there's an enforcement arm that lies within the FDA that needs to aggressively deal with these issues as well.

"Folks who buy and sell seafood should hold themselves and those around them accountable for unethical and illegal schemes," she added. "But it's often difficult to do that when the perception is that regulators themselves aren't doing enough."

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