Report: U.S. should step up seafood import testing

The United States Food and Drug Administration should increase seafood import drug residue testing and other efforts to prevent contaminated shipments from entering the country, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The FDA sampled only 0.1 percent of all seafood imports for the presence of banned antibiotics in fiscal year 2015, according to the GAO, which acts as the official auditor of the U.S. government. Its report, “Imported Seafood Safety: FDA and USDA Could Strengthen Efforts to Prevent Unsafe Drug Residues,” pointed out multiple problems with the way the United States currently handles inspections of imported seafood.Additionally,as the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service takes over greater responsibility for overseeing inspections of imported catfish along with the FDA, the agencies generally have not coordinated on drug residue testing methods, resulting, in some cases, in differences in drug residue levels used to determine if seafood is unsafe, the report said.