The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) on Tuesday identified the proposed U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) catfish inspection program as a waste of taxpayer dollars and a duplication of federal agency efforts — for a staggering ninth time.
GAO, tasked with identifying areas where executive branch agencies or Congress can reduce, eliminate or better manage fragmentation, overlap and duplication, says eliminating the USDA program would not affect the “safety of catfish intended for human consumption” while saving millions of dollars annually.
Catfish and pangasius inspections and enforcement are already the purview of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as are all U.S. seafood imports.
A provision of the 2008 Farm Bill, the inspection program has yet to be officially implemented. Critics, including the National Fisheries Institute (NFI), said there is no other single program that has been targeted as often by GAO.
“While it may not waste the most money, only 170 million taxpayer dollars (EUR 159 million), it is the quintessential example of a program that forces two agencies to do the same job and in the process hurts multiple sectors; imports, exports, agriculture, fisheries, food safety, the list goes on,” NFI said in an alert to its media contacts on Tuesday. It also urged reporters to visit www.repealcatfish.com for more information.
