Oyster industry regulations would have to clear hurdles

Benjamin Alexander-Bloch, The Times-Picayune

12/01/10:

The U.S. Senate's passage of a sweeping food safety bill on Tuesday would give the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented power to regulate food contamination, but no immediate regulations would be imposed upon the Gulf Coast oyster industry.

An amendment to the legislation will require the FDA to first conduct public health and cost assessments before issuing any new regulations that would affect the processing and consumption of raw oysters.

While the bill still must be passed by the House of Representatives, the House approved a similar bill last year.

The legislation, which gives the FDA power to demand food recalls and increases inspections on high-risk foods, comes a year after the FDA backed down on proposed 2011 bacterial treatment requirements for raw oysters in warmer months.

In October 2009, the FDA had announced that beginning in 2011 all Gulf oysters would go through a post-harvest treatment process before being sold between the months of April through October. The move was meant to reduce the risk of the vibrio vulnificus illness, a rare but deadly bacteria sometimes present in raw oysters.

The announcement triggered fears that a signature Louisiana delicacy could disappear for much of the year. And after weeks of pressure from Louisiana and Gulf Coast lawmakers, FDA officials changed course, saying that due to "legitimate concerns" from the oyster industry, it would hold off on the new rules.

Louisiana produces the most oysters of any state: about one-third of all oysters harvested in the United States. Nearly 60 percent are harvested from April to October, with about half of those destined to be eaten raw on the half shell.
On Tuesday, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., stated that language she secured in the new food safety bill "ensures that the FDA's overreaching approach is abandoned for good and helps put us on a sustainable path forward to protecting the small number of at-risk consumers, while making sure our oyster industry is vibrant well into the future."

"We simply cannot afford another setback for our oyster industry as it recovers from the BP oil spill," she stated.

Any potential regulations to post-harvest processing for raw oysters would now require consultation with state officials and agencies and intense federal scrutiny that includes passing a report through the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and the House's Committee on Energy and Commerce.

That FDA report would have to detail how post-harvest processing could be implemented in the fastest, safest and most economical manner, the projected public health benefits and the costs of compliance on the oyster industry.

The FDA also would have to guarantee that any criteria would be applied equally to shellfish imported from all foreign counties. And it must provide "an evaluation of alternative measures to prevent, eliminate or reduce to an acceptable level the occurrence of food-borne illness."

The report can be waived if the regulation is agreed upon by federal and state regulators and the oyster industry, acting through the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference.

The U.S. Comptroller General also will have to review the proposed regulations and present an analysis to Congress.

Mike Voisin, a member of the Louisiana Oyster Task Force and the owner of Motivatit Seafoods in Houma, stated his relief that the FDA will now be required to involve the oyster community in its decision-making.

"This amendment, it says to them, 'You, the FDA, will have to do a tremendous amount of work to require this post-harvest processing,' " Voisin said. "It says 'If you are going to have the requirement, then you have to go through the states, the shellfish community, the agencies, the academics and determine that that is the way to go.' "

Landrieu claimed in her announcement on Tuesday that only 15 individuals with pre-existing conditions died from eating raw oysters last year in the United States, accounting for less than one-quarter of 1 percent of all food-related deaths.

A separate Landrieu-sponsored amendment to the sprawling food-safety bill failed. It would have increased FDA inspections on seafood imports to 20 percent by 2015.

The Southern Shrimp Alliance claims the FDA currently inspects less than 2 percent of such imports.

The amendment had urged for a three strikes policy. After a third food safety violation, an importer would have been banned from the market.

The Southern Shrimp Alliance strongly pushed for that amendment, with Executive Director John Williams stating that imported shrimp often contains harmful antibiotics and pesticides and that "bad actors engaging in transshipment are putting U.S. consumers at risk and destroying the family-run shrimping businesses that support hundreds of coastal communities in eight states."