Tag: FDA
A new program will allow Louisiana fishers, dealers and processors to voluntarily participate in a program to ensure the authenticity of wild Louisiana seafood.
U.S. Senator David Vitter, Senator Mary Landrieu and six other senators from Gulf states sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg asking the FDA to step up efforts to ensure the public understands that Gulf seafood is safe to eat.
With more than 80 percent of seafood sold in America coming from many foreign sources — most of it processed and frozen — the federal government is expressing concern over the safety of that imported seafood.
The Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board wants the support of the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Task Force in developing a Gulf Coast–wide testing protocol for seafood.
In a newspaper OpEd, three top federal and state officials – including the FDA’s Donald Kraemer – have expressed their confidence about the safety of eating Gulf seafood and the extensive seafood testing programs.
Despite a battalion of voices from the scientific and culinary world confirming the current safety of Gulf of Mexico seafood, skeptics persist. That’s led EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to ask scientists whether they’ve witnessed this level of rigor in seafood testing ever before.
Louisiana scientists who work for public health announce that after testing 1,000 samples of seafood, the results are in: “Scientists tell us that oil does not bioaccumulate in seafood, and every test we’ve conducted confirms that seafood is safe,” says one official.
According to Don Kraemer, FDA’s Deputy Director in the Office of Food Safety, the agency has been surprised by the number of media stories that give credibility to “junk science” and questionable seafood tests.
Leaders in the Louisiana seafood industry are in Washington, D.C., this week to push for ongoing, extensive testing of Gulf seafood — and a better way of telling a nation of seafood consumers that Gulf seafood is safe.
“It’s easy to manufacture fear,” says accomplished political consultant, attorney and educator James Carville. But, “It’s hard to manufacture test results.”
Commercial fishing are reopening for fin fish and shrimp in portions of state waters east of the Mississippi River in Orleans, St. Tammany, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes.
With the look of a man who knows the severity of the situation all too well, Harlon Pearce surveys his business of almost 20 years as supplies of domestic fresh fish, shrimp and crabs dwindle by the day.
In major vote of confidence for the Louisiana Seafood Industry, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced that Gulf fish and shellfish – harvested from areas unaffected by the precautionary closures of fishing waters – are considered safe to eat.
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