Import Alert: Government Fails Consumers, Falls Short on Seafood Inspections

The Food and Drug Administration oversees the safety of seafood imports. However, inadequate funding and a mediocre inspection program contributed to the federal government agency physically inspecting less than two percent of the 860,000 imported seafood shipments in 2006. Only 0.59 percent of shipments were tested for contaminants in a laboratory. Import Alert: Government Fails Consumers, Falls Short on Seafood Inspection, looks at data from FDA import refusals of seafood shipments at the border and identifies trends in the data from 2003 to 2006 and highlights issues related to imports of shrimp, the most popular seafood among U.S. consumers.