In case you didn’t know anti-competition lobbyists representing American catfish farmers are working hard to have a Vietnamese fish called pangasius banned from this country and that spells trouble for Montana cattlemen. Despite the fact that pangasius has been safely imported for years and has caused a grand total of zero illnesses, the bottom-feeding special interest lobby has cooked up a food safety scare story and is shopping it to USDA and anyone in Washington who will listen.

The Billings Gazette described the situation as “an international fight over catfish [which] could undo U.S. relations with the third-largest foreign buyer of American beef.” It’s pretty simple actually– American catfish producers who don’t want to compete with pangasius work to get that fish regulated out of the U.S. market and they win-case closed. But who loses?

Beef, that’s who.

The Wall Street Journal explained Senator Max Baucus’ interest in the tale this way, “[Sen. Baucus] fears a U.S. ban on Vietnamese pangasius would spur Hanoi into a retaliatory ban on U.S. beef. The stakes (no pun intended) are high on both sides. The pangasius industry is critical to the economy of the Mekong River region and employs thousands directly and indirectly. Meanwhile, Vietnam is the fifth-largest market for U.S. beef exports; American ranchers sold $131 million in beef there last year.”

Cattlemen know the pain faux food safety arguments can cause when it comes to international trade and don’t deserve to be collateral damage in a trade war they did not have anything to do with starting.

The Journal concluded, “Mr. Baucus has hit on a basic trade truth here. Interfering with the free trade in one good can have unintended consequences that can hurt the protectionist as much as the exporter.

President Obama’s Agriculture Department is currently reviewing whether Vietnamese pangasius fish should be subject to a ban. The Administration would be wise to heed the cattleman’s counsel.”

On Thursday CNN ran a story about imported shrimp from Thailand that was really just a rehash of an old AFL-CIO report about suspected labor abuses. There was nothing new about the report or about the package CNN produced so the first question is, where is the new in this news?

But the story doesn’t end there. You see, the reporter and producer who put the piece together did a rather shabby job of a number of thing: #1 getting all sides of the story, #2 understanding that the story had progressed past the year-and-a-half old press release handed out by a labor union and #3 using sound bites in context.

It’s #3 that makes things interesting. In the original piece an important-looking State Department Official says, “Bodies wash up routinely on the shores of Malaysia, Thailand, and Cambodia, where they have been tossed overboard. And usually it’s for asking for a fair wage, talking back to the boss, asking to be taken back to shore.”

It’s a shocking tale for sure that really makes the story. Here we have a high ranking so and so confirming for us on-camera our worse fears in graphic detail. The problem is the CNN producers were apparently blinded by an it-bleeds-it-leads mentality when they chose this sound bite because they didn’t really listen to his words, they heard what they wanted to hear and that was enough. You see the story was about imported shrimp from places like Thailand and somewhere in the neighborhood of ninety-plus percent of shrimp from Thailand is farmed and nearly all the shrimp imported to the U.S. from there is farmed. That’s right-for the most part there are no boats to throw workers off of because they don’t work on boats, they work on farms. So, while it’s a juicy story it’s not germane to report at hand. If you were never on board how can you be thrown over board?

I won’t get into all of the details but we brought this point and others to the attention of CNN’s editorial director and Executive producer and rather than becoming defensive and accusatory they… wait for it… agreed with us. The story has been reedited and sensational tales of abuses that don’t relate to shrimp farming in any way have been removed from the piece.

While we don’t agree with the way CNN went about producing aspects of this (old)news story we do agree with its interest in getting the story right and its willingness to go back and correct its mistakes. While we wish they hadn’t made those mistakes in the first place we are also pleased that they did the right thing.

Many times I have seen newsrooms that fouled up a story circle the wagons and fight rather than working to correct the record. CNN, under editorial director Richard Griffiths, has proven itself once again an outfit that wants to get the story right and puts in the extra effort to fix things when it does not.

At the same time the Obama Administration is working to curb the influence of narrow special interests, American catfish producers are busy telling fish tales to Congress to get their competition regulated out of existence. They’ve dreamt up a faux food safety scare and they’re shopping it to any reporter or regulator who will listen. It’s a piece of fiction that’s fat with anecdotal exaggerations and thin on facts. But this isn’t the first time the anti-competition catfish lobby has stooped to these types of tactics.

They’ve been at it for years — ever since American consumers first discovered Vietnamese pangasius a decade ago.

Domestic catfish producers hated the new competition, so they got the government to ensure the fish was not considered a “catfish.” As the head of the catfish lobby stated in 2002, “That fish (basa) and ours (catfish) are as close taxonomically as a housecat and a cow.” That makes it pretty clear that catfish farmers do not see Vietnamese pangasius as a catfish.

Yet American consumers still continued to enjoy eating the Vietnamese fish. So, the catfish lobby is at it again.

Now they’re asking the government to reclassify pangasius as a “catfish” — that’s right, the same fish they said wasn’t “catfish” 7 years ago. And since USDA now oversees “catfish” that would mean switching pangasius regulation from FDA to USDA, despite the fact that there is no demonstrable evidence of a food safety hazard associated with pangasius or FDA’s oversight of it.

USDA’s food safety system is not “better” than FDA’s HACCP (Hazard Analysis & Critical Control Points) system (a system that has been safely overseeing imported and domestic seafood for close to 15 years) it’s just different. FDA’s system forces companies to correct problems overseas not at the U.S. border. And keep in mind FDA, which the catfish lobby is now saying is inadequate, has historically overseen catfish safety. Is the catfish lobby saying that they have been selling unsafe products to the American public all these years?

An analysis of CDC illnesses reports provides clear evidence that far, far more people are sickened by beef, pork and poultry than by fish. For instance in 2006, CDC reported more than 1,100 Americans got sick from poultry tainted from e.coli, salmonella, or listeria. Only 12 people were ill from fish. Even when adjusted for consumption patterns, Americans were more likely to fall ill from USDA regulated product than FDA inspected product. The argument that changing the inspection regime of one particular imported fish species from FDA to USDA is somehow going to make consumers safer is simply false. There isno increased food safety risk associated with pangasius — despite what the anti-competition lobby claims.

Is this really the time to be taking action that will raise the price of seafood for Americans? Is it really time to spend more than $16 million at USDA to develop a new regulatory regime for an imported fish that Americans only eat a Quarter Pounder worth per year?

Furthermore, is this how we really want to treat one of our trading partners — especially one so open to other agriculture products? While other countries have raised trade barriers to American products, Vietnam has fully opened its markets to U.S. beef and poultry. And Vietnam’s aquaculture industry depends on American soy to feed the very same fish that the special interests want to keep out of our grocery stores. Shouldn’t USDA worry as much about cattlemen and soy farmers as the catfish lobby?

After opening its markets to America, how do we expect Vietnam to react when it’s denied access to ours?

And that’s not the only problem. It’s estimated that closing American markets to pangasius could cost 11,000 jobs for American dock workers, truckers, fish processing plant line employees, and retailer workers.

The fact of the matter is simple. The Food and Drug Administration is already regulating the fish, keeping it safe for American consumers. This faux food safety scare trumped up by yet another Washington special interest, would only hurt American consumers and American businesses and not provide any greater food safety protection.

It’s time we said no to Washington’s bottom feeders once and for all. Those really interested in seafood safety will keep seafood at FDA — where the experts have proven they know how to ensure a safe seafood supply.

A couple of hours ago, the Environmental Protection Agency published something called the National Lake Fish TissueStudy, a “national screening-level survey of chemical residues in fish tissue from lakes and reservoirs,” in the lower 48 states. Here’s how the AP is reporting its findings.

“Nearly half of lakes and reservoirs nationwide contain fish with potentially harmful levels of the toxic metal mercury, according to a federal study released Tuesday.

“The Environmental Protection Agency found mercury – a pollutant primarily released from coal-fired power plants – and polychlorinated biphenyls in all fish samples it collected from 500 lakes and reservoirs from 2000-2003.

“At 49 percent of those lakes and reservoirs, mercury concentrations exceeded levels that the EPA says are safe for people eating average amounts of fish.

On one level, I’m actually relieved, as the AP has gotten it right on the substance. We know from experience that every time a study about mercury in freshwater fish runs on the national wires, reporters and editors from around the country, in many cases goaded on by environmental activists, will either deliberately or accidentally conflate freshwater fish with seafood.

That’s clearly not the case here. So bravo to the AP for getting it right.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that reporters elsewhere won’t be making the same mistake overnight. In fact, I think we can probably count on that. In any case, we’ll be doing what we always do: watch and wait and comment when we feel the need.

Sure, we might sound like a broken record with the following science-based points:

• By and large the fish EPA tested from lakes and reservoirs are not the commercial fish we enjoy in restaurants or buy in the grocery store. This is not a study that should have consumers in any way concerned about the commercial fish they regularly enjoy.
• For those who rely on subsistence fishing or those who enjoy recreational fishing, EPA’s report appears to highlight the need to check with local and regional fish advisories.

But better that than letting the record go uncorrected.

If you’ll remember it was just this month last year that we blogged about Safe Harbor Certified Seafood and how its website features an attack on canned tuna that employs overt exaggeration and blatant misinformation.

Well, they’re back and this time they’re hyping a poll of 600 people that they dub a “nationwide consumer survey.” They claim it shows Americans choose “mercury in seafood as their top food safety issue.”

Let’s address this silly marketing ploy one part at a time. First off, their release suggests a “a full methodology is available”-let’s go ahead and get that methodology posted on their website, shall we? Let’s see just what questions were asked and how many people came to that conclusion unaided?

Once we’ve got that detail figured out lets ask why the consumers they spoke to chose mercury in fish, a naturally occurring element that kills 0 people a year, as their top food safety concern as apposed to Salmonella, which is estimated by the CDC to kill more than 500 people a year, or Listeria, which kills another 500.

Okay then, we probably should address that and then we’ll get into some of the Safe Harbor details that make many of their claims more than a little unpalatable.

Watch this space.

Are you serious?

The professional actor and whiner who once claimed he got mercury poising from eating sushi, a claim that would make him the only person in America to have ever come down with such toxicity via the normal consumption of commercial seafood, is making another claim today about how his diet has affected him adversely.

This time Piven says drinking too much soy milk caused him to grow breasts.

Stand by for more normal, educated, well-researched, rational, medical diagnoses from Dr. Jeremy Piven. PhD MS RD

We’ve written a number of times about how “>the oceans would be emptied by 2048. Of course, Making Waves, the Greenpeace oceans blog,