WASHINGTON — Ten Asian and Pacific nations have told the Office of the United States Trade Representative that the Agriculture Department’s catfish inspection program violates international law, and their objections could hamper Obama administration efforts to reach a major Pacific trade agreement by the end of next year.
They say that the inspection program is a trade barrier erected under the guise of a food safety measure and that it violates the United States’ obligations under World Trade Organization agreements. Among the countries protesting are Vietnam and Malaysia, which are taking part in talks for the trade agreement — known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership — and have the ability to derail or hold up those negotiations.
The complaints are outlined in a May 28 letter signed by diplomats from the 10 countries. The letter does not threaten retaliation, but it stresses that the American catfish program stood in the way of the trade talks.
Vietnam, a major catfish producer, has long complained about the program, but it has never before won international support for its fight. Several of the countries whose representatives signed the letter — including the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand and Indonesia — do not have catfish industries to protect and are not involved in the trans-Pacific trade talks.
But the letter expresses the concern that the inspection program could lead the Agriculture Department to expand its ability to regulate seafood exports to the United States, catfish or not.
“Many of these countries are looking to see what happens to Vietnam on the catfish issues, and what precedence it might set for other trade deals in the region,” said Jeffrey J. Schott, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington and the co-author of a book on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The United States and 11 countries on both sides of the Pacific — as well as Australia, New Zealand and Brunei — are still negotiating the trade pact, which has been repeatedly delayed over various disputes.
The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers recently hired James Bacchus, a former chairman of the World Trade Organization’s appeals panel, to prepare a possible legal challenge to the catfish inspection program.
Mr. Bacchus said in an interview that only governments have standing to bring a case before the trade organization, but that the export group was working closely with Vietnamese officials to monitor the catfish inspection program.
“I’m confident that Vietnam would have a case before the W.T.O. if they decided to bring one,” said Mr. Bacchus, a former United States House member from Florida who is now a lawyer with Greenberg Traurig in Washington.
The inspection program was inserted into the 2008 farm bill at the urging of catfish farmers, who have been hurt by competition from both Vietnam and China and by the rising cost of catfish feed. The domestic catfish industry has shrunk by about 60 percent since its peak about a decade ago, and in the past few years about 20 percent of American catfish farming operations have closed.
The catfish industry and lawmakers led by Senator Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, fought for the new office, saying it was needed to protect Americans from eating fish raised in unsanitary conditions or contaminated with drugs. The Food and Drug Administration has a similar program, but it inspects less than 2 percent of food imports, and advocates of the Agriculture Department program said that was not good enough.
The Agriculture Department has traditionally inspected meat and poultry, while the F.D.A. has been responsible for all other foods, including seafood.
Agriculture Department inspections are more stringent than those conducted by the F.D.A. The Agriculture Department requires meat- and poultry-exporting countries to set up their own inspection programs — an expensive and burdensome regulation that Vietnam says is unnecessary for catfish.
A Government Accountability Office report in May 2012 called imported catfish a low-risk food and said an Agriculture Department inspection program would “not enhance the safety of catfish.”
The Agriculture Department said it had spent $20 million since 2009 to set up its office, which has a staff of four, although it has yet to inspect a single catfish. The department said it expected to spend about $14 million a year to run the program; the F.D.A., by comparison, spends about $700,000 annually on its existing seafood inspection office.
Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, and other critics say the Agriculture Department program is a waste of money, and Mr. McCain sponsored an amendment in the latest farm bill that would have killed the program. But the measure was never brought up for a vote. The Obama administration has also called for eliminating the Agriculture Department program.
Source: National Fisheries Institute
