Washington, DC – The USDA’s catfish inspection program wastes millions of taxpayer dollars and does a job already being done by the FDA, according to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office (GAO.) For the tenth time in five years the GAO has included the program in its rogue’s gallery of wasteful federal boondoggles.
The GAO pulls no punches when it suggests, “Congress should consider repealing provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill assigning the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) responsibility for examining and inspecting catfish and for creating a catfish inspection program.” (p.26)
For years the program has been lambasted for its waste:
- “It would be funny if it weren’t so costly…” –Wall Street Journal
- “…they’ve spent about twenty million doing nothing.” –Citizens Against Government Waste
- “If there were legitimate food safety reasons for having USDA inspect catfish, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.” –Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
- “Congress needs to eliminate this new regulation immediately because taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for more bloated bureaucracy.”—Taxpayers Protection Alliance
- “It serves no public interest, it’s costly for taxpayers, it’s duplicative …” –Sen. John Kerry (6/12)
The USDA Catfish Inspection program has a virtual army opposed to it, including a bipartisan cadre in the House and Senate. There is also a who’s who in the world of public health, public policy, economics, trade and regulation calling for the repeal of a program that does not improve food safety but does waste American tax dollars.
“With this being the tenth occasion the GAO has featured USDA catfish inspection, we can find no other single federal program that has been targeted as many times,” said NFI’s Communications Manager Lynsee Fowler.
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Contact: Gavin Gibbons (703) 752-8891 ggibbons@NFI.org
All ten reports:
High-risk series (February 2011), Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue (March 2011), Responsibility for Inspecting Catfish Should Not Be Assigned to USDA (May 2012), High-Risk Series An Update (February 2013), Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation , Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits (April 2013), Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits (April 2014). Additional Actions Needed to Improve Planning and Collaboration (December 2014)]. High-Risk Series An Update (February 2015), 2015 Annual Report: Additional Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits (April 2015,) Government Efficiency and Effectiveness; Opportunities to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve Other Financial Benefits (April 2016.)
Source: National Fisheries Institute (NFI)
