Friday, July 27, 2018

Senate votes to increase funding for imported seafood

 The U.S. Senate this week voted in favor of an amendment to significantly increase funding for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s inspections of imported seafood and foreign seafood facilities.

By a vote of 81 to 11, the Senate adopted an amendment directing the FDA to spend an additional $3.1 million in fiscal year 2019 on the agency’s inspections of imported seafood at the border and of foreign seafood facilities overseas. 

The additional $3.1 million in funds would increase the FDA’s spending on these activities to $15 million dollars, an increase of about 26 percent.

The increase in funding was badly needed – in 2015 the FDA examined just over 2 percent of the over one million seafood entry lines that year.


The increased funding is good news for commercial fishermen who have to compete with foreign fishermen many of which are unfairly subsidized by their governments, face virtually no environmental regulations and pump their product full of antibiotics.  


http://live.oysterradio.com/

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