With so many recalls, how worried should you really be about imports? And as you sit down for dinner -- do you know what's in the food your eating?
Much of the seafood you buy is imported from other countries and could be contaminated.
The next time you go food shopping you might want to think about spending a few more dollars to buy fish raised in the U.S. or you can pinch pennies and buy fish so filthy it has the potential to make you sick.
Would you want to eat catfish from China that tested positive for veterinary drugs? Snapper from Malaysia rejected by inspectors because it was considered filthy? Or swordfish raised in Vietnam deemed poisonous?
But it could be hard to avoid. 80 percent of the seafood now sold in the United States comes from overseas. And it's this foreign fish -- primarily what’s coming in from Asia -- that is failing safety tests.
Marshall Taylor says U.S. regulations made raising trout in Kentucky a stringent process for 18 years. But his fish were never a risk to the public health.
All the big processing houses have to have their own inspector, and they’re either full-time or most of the time that are checking the fish as it’s being processed, right out of the water,” he says.
Blue Fin Seafood on Main Street in downtown Louisville supplies a variety of fish to local restaurants in Kentucky.
“We grow it here in town, it’s all-natural, they use natural feed,” says Joe Banoba.
And what comes in to Blue Fin from out of the country is mainly from New Zealand and Chile. Banoba told me is he sticks with familiar suppliers and institutes a further safe guard -- requiring documentation from all suppliers to show which feed is used. He makes that documentation available to any of his customers.
As for what you find on your supermarket shelves, the FDA is able to inspect only 1 percent.
Fish is one of the few foods that is required by law to have the country of origin printed on the label. So it is up to you, the consumer, to decide whether you want to buy it.
Could the concern over seafood imports reverse American buying habits?
Seafood consumption has been up 11% since 2001.
The average American now consumes 16 and a half pounds of seafood per year.
Shrimp is the top choice --- and that represents almost a quarter of the seafood that Americans eat.
By Kirby Adams: Web Story produced by Jessica Nelson and published on WHAS11 News
