FISH PROCESSING INSPECTION MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1974 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND WILDLIFE COMMITTEE ON MERCHANT MARINE AND FISHERIES, Washington, D.C. The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m., in room 1302, Longworth Office Building, Hon. John D. Dingell, chairman of the subcommittee, presiding. Mr. DINGELL. The subcommittee will please come to order. This morning the subcommittee will continue its hearings on legislation to provide for a mandatory inspection program of fish and fishery products. The bills being heard are H.R. 12849, introduced by the distinguished chairman of our committee, Mrs. Sullivan, and the present occupant of the chair; H.R. 8894, introduced by Mr. Melcher; and H.R. 887, introduced by Mr. Pepper, and the present occupant of the chair. At the hearings on Wednesday of last week, we heard from representatives of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the Department of Commerce, and representatives of the Food and Drug Administration of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. However, at the conclusion of the Wednesday hearings the members had not completed their questioning of the witnesses, so if the witnesses from Food and Drug will take their places at the witness table we will proceed with the questioning. The Chair is most pleased to see our distinguished chairman has recuperated from her bout with the flu and is able to be with us today. The Chair is delighted to recognize our distinguished chairman, Mrs. Sullivan, at this time for any statement she may care to make, or for any questions she may care to ask of the witnesses. If you gentlemen will please come forward. We will now recognize our chairman, Mrs. Sullivan. STATEMENT OF SHERWIN GARDNER, DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF FOOD AND DRUG, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, EDUCATION, AND WELFARE, ACCOMPANIED BY PETER BARTON HUTT, ASSISTANT GENERAL COUNSEL FOR FOOD AND DRUGS; DR. VIRGIL 0. WODICKA, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF FOODS: AND DR. ROBERT ANGELOTTI, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF COMPLIANCE, BUREAU OF FOODS Mr. GARDNER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Sherwin Gardner, Deputy Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration. At my left is Peter Hutt, General Counsel. To my right is Dr. Virgil O. Wodicka, Bureau of Foods, and then Dr. Robert Angelotti, Office of Compliance, Bureau of Foods. Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, gentlemen. Mrs. Sullivan? Mrs. SULLIVAN. I am pleased that you, Mr. Chairman, have launched these important hearings, and I am glad I could come back and participate today. The subject of wholesome fish has been a major consumer interest of mine over a period of many years, and this issue takes on new importance now as a result of the soaring prices of food, and the increasing role of fish as a source of protein in the American diet. Unlike the red meats and poultry, however, we do not have the means in the Federal Government to assure the public of fish and fish products produced and processed under proper conditions of sanitation and purity, and I think the public is entitled to that assurance. As chairman of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, which has taken many steps to bolster our domestic fishing industry, I think the best thing that could happen to the economics of this industry is to provide Government assurance that the product is safe, nutritious, and can be eaten with confidence in its wholesomeness. If you will let me digress and go back to 2 years ago, I think the history of what I am going to mention is worth putting into the record. About 20 years ago, while in my first term as a consumer-minded Member of Congress, I was approached by Arnold Mayer of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union with some horrifying information about conditions in the poultry processing plants in this country. Poultry handlers were sickened in several instances as a result of contact in their work with diseased poultry, and much of this poultry was getting out of the plants and into the Nation's food supply. I took up this matter with the Food and Drug Administration, and was reported that it was unable to monitor the poultry industry effectively, and that in the meantime something like 27 diseases found in poultry, many of them quite serious, could be transmitted to humans. That material appeared in the Congressional Record of July 26, 1954, and led to my introduction in the following Congress of the legislation which became the Poultry Product Inspection Act of 1957. I might add that that legislation was bitterly opposed at first by the poultry industry. But following its enactment, the biggest beneficiaries of that law, except for the consumers, of course, were the poultry producers themselves, because with the Federal inspection stamp on their product, they were able to within a few months increase public acceptance for their products, and of particular importance, sell vast quantities of American poultry abroad to countries which had previously prohibited entry of American poultry because of sanitary conditions in the industry. Insanitary plants in interstate commerce were closed down. Although the law provided for Federal inspection under certain circumstances of poultry sold in intrastate commerce that authority was never used under the 1957 act, no matter how much pressure was brought to bear on the Department of Agriculture to invoke intrastate authority. Then several years later, I introduced a bill to provide similar authority to inspect meat sold only in intrastate commerce. The origin of that bill resulted from a complaint from processors in my district engaged in interstate commerce that they were forced under Federal meat inspection standards to label their watered hams as imitation ham, whereas packers engaged only in intrastate commerce did not have to do so, and had a competitive advantage. The more I looked into the intrastate meat processing situation, the more convinced I became that the competition aspects were the least important of the considerations involved; that consumer protection against diseases and unwholesome meat sold within a particular State was the most urgent. That was the reason for passage of corrective legislation, and such legislation was finally enacted 5 years later in 1967 as the Wholesome Meat Act, thanks to the fine work done by Mr. Mayer's union, Betty Furness in President Johnson's staff, Ralph Nader, the Secretary of Agriculture, Orville Freeman, and many others. I then asked Secretary Freeman to draft for me a bill to conform the Poultry Act of 1957 to the new Wholesome Meat Act of 1967, and that led to the enactment of the Wholesome Poultry Act of 1968. But fish, to the extent that it is regulated at all by the Federal Government, is handled the same way that poultry was before the 1957 act was passed, dependent upon spot checks by the Food and Drug Administration, and occasional seizure of contaminated or adulterated shipments in interstate commerce when discovered. H.R. 12849 is modeled generally on the Wholesome Meat Act and the Wholesome Poultry Act. If we seriously want to persuade the American people to eat more fish, then we have got to assure them that the product is safe and wholesome. Much of the fish sold in this country, including imported fish, cannot provide that assurance. I am disappointed that the Commerce Department, which now operates a voluntary fish inspection program, has taken such an unenthusiastic position on legislation to require fish inspection. The FDA can no more handle this problem on a spot check basis than it could handle the poultry problems in the 1950's. It has authority to assure the wholesomeness of our fish supply, if the job could be done effectively on a spot check basis, and it has not been able to do it. You need inspectors in the plant at all times, as is done with meat and poultry, and the day will inevitably come when all food processing will be subject to the continuous Federal or Federal-State inspection, and when that happens I doubt very much that FDA will have to turn to the grocery warehouses and foodstores and turn them upside down to look for recall products which should never have gotten out of the plant in the first place. Now, with your permission, Mr. Chairman, I have a half dozen or so questions I would like to ask the FDA officials. I would ask any one of you if you can, to answer these questions, without directing it to any one in particular. In reading the FDA statement on this legislation, I am struck by the fact that everything you say in opposition to compulsory and continuous inspection of fish processing could be said just as accurately about the Department of Agriculture's meat and poultry inspection programs. I want to know, do you think these programs should be terminated and turned over to FDA on a spot check basis? Mr. GARDNER. Well, Mrs. Sullivan, I think we would like to distinguish again between some of the things which the Department of Agriculture does in their inspection programs, and the things that the FDA does in carrying out its inspection responsibilities. Many of the duties which the Department of Agriculture carries out are focused on economic standards; that is, they inspect the meat and grade it for purposes of providing an identification in the marketplace. Our inspection role is one which is concerned primarily with the consumers health and the safety of the product which is being processed. Mrs. SULLIVAN. Would that not be true of meat and poultry? On a spot check basis, the problems were not found on the spot check investigations or inspections, and what we are trying to do today is to find some way to supply not only our own country, but the whole world, with more food and fish which had been one of those things I think that has been neglected. It is astonishing to see what has happened with poultry. Once they had the compulsory inspection it did throw some of the small poultry growers and processors out of business, because they could not meet the standards. However, the poultry industry tripled within a couple of years, and that undoubtedly did it because of conditions of the meat market. Are we not devoting to each of these programs more money, and I am talking about poultry and meat, more money than FDA has available for all of its food safety programs, and how do they differ from fish as a potential source of consumer illnesses. Mr. GARDNER. Well, I might answer that question in part, and then ask Dr. Wodicka to respond more fully. I think, Mrs. Sullivan, that a number of things have happened since the initial steps were taken against, or to control effectively the poultry industry, as well as the red meat industry. Some of those things involve learning on the part of people who have the job for controlling, and by that I mean we have come to understand that the product control is what is the most important thing that needs to be accomplished. No number of inspectors can ever hope to assure safety unless the appropriate processes are in place for producing the food, whatever food it happens to be, whether it be red meat, or poultry, or eggs, or cereals or fish, and that the most important thing that can be done to assure the American public the safety of the product they eat is to have the manufactures of those products install adequate quality assurance techniques. |