Two months after the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) said U.S. federal agencies were not doing enough to prevent economic fraud in the seafood industry, something is finally being done to link the agencies’ efforts.
The Better Seafood Board (BSB) is bringing six government regulatory offices together in Washington, D.C., on Thursday to educate officials and find solutions for short-weighted packs of seafood.
Attending the meeting, hosted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will be representatives from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Conference on Weights and Measures, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and select state programs.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity to help these agencies better understand the problem and unify their response to it,” said Lisa Weddig, BSB secretary. “Members of the BSB take their commitment to fighting fraud in the seafood industry seriously and it’s heartening to see such a diverse group of regulators recognize that effort and step up to address this issue.”
In late March, the GAO reported that the various federal agencies “do not effectively collaborate with each other.” For instance, each agency has its own laboratories for determining seafood species and use 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 economic fraud, but the FDA’s priority is food safety and the agency commits minimal resources to preventing seafood fraud.
The National Fisheries Institute of McLean, Va., established the BSB in 2007 to provide a mechanism for industry’s partners in the supply chain — restaurants, retail operations, producers and processors — to report suppliers suspected of committing economic fraud.
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