WASHINGTON – Farmed seafood has now joined tires, toothpaste and toy trains on the list of tainted and defective products from China that could be hazardous to a person's health.
Federal health officials said Thursday they were detaining three types of Chinese fish -- catfish, basa and dace -- as well as shrimp and eel after repeated testing turned up contamination with drugs unapproved in the United States for use in farmed seafood.
The officials said there have been no reports of illnesses nor do the products pose any immediate health risk. They stopped short of ordering a ban on the fresh and frozen seafood.
The Food and Drug Administration announcement was the latest in an expanding series of problems with imported Chinese products that seemingly permeate U.S. society.
Beyond the fish, federal regulators have recently warned consumers about lead paint in toy trains, defective tires, and toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze. All the products were imported from China.
China, meanwhile, insisted Thursday that the safety of its products was "guaranteed," making a rare direct comment on spreading international fears over tainted and adulterated exports.
FDA officials said the level of the drugs in the seafood was low. The FDA isn't asking stores or consumers to toss any of the suspect seafood.
"In order to get cancer in lab animals you have to feed fairly high levels of the drug over a long term," said Dr. David Acheson, the FDA's assistant commissioner for food protection. "We're talking not days, weeks, not even months but years. At these levels you might not reach that level, but we don't want to take a chance."
He added, "We don't want to be alarmist here. ... It's a low likelihood."
The FDA said sampling of Chinese imported fish between October and May repeatedly found traces of the antibiotics nitrofuran and fluoroquinolone, as well as the antifungals malachite green and gentian violet. Of particular concern are the fluoroquinolones, a family of widely used human antibiotics that the FDA forbids in seafood in part to prevent bacteria from developing resistance to these important drugs. The best known example is ciprofloxacin, sold as Cipro, which made headlines as a treatment during the 2001 anthrax attacks.
The FDA will allow individual shipments of the five seafood species into the country if a company can show the products are free of residues of these drugs.
"This action will put a hold on the products of concern at the port of entry. This shifts the burden of proof back to the importer to prove to us that it is safe," Acheson said.
China is the third largest exporter of seafood to the United States, according to the FDA. More than half of its global seafood exports are farmed. But the FDA inspects only about 5 percent of farmed Chinese fish, agency officials said.
The use of drugs in foreign fish farming operations has long been a concern of federal and state regulators. Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi recently banned imports of catfish from China after tests detected antibiotics not approved for use in farmed seafood.
"Clearly the addition of these drugs, it's a deliberate event," Margaret Glavin, the FDA's associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, told reporters. "If they stop adding them, the problem is going to go away."
The FDA acted after finding problems with 15 percent of the Chinese seafood it tested. Glavin said the FDA also has found companies in the Philippines and Mexico using the drugs and has issued similar import alerts for those firms' products.
Other problems plague Chinese seafood imports as well. In May alone, the FDA stopped shipments of frozen crab meat found to be filthy, as well as roasted eel laced with unsafe additives, tilapia fillets tainted by salmonella and an unidentified fish mislabeled as catfish.
Chinese exports first came under broad scrutiny earlier this year with the deaths of dogs and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat flour spiked with the chemical melamine to make it appear like more expensive, protein-rich ingredients. Since then, reports of new problems have been almost a daily occurrence.
Just Thursday, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced the recall of two Chinese-made products: 1.2 million Lasko Products Inc. ceramic heaters that pose a fire hazard and 2,300 Schylling Associates Inc. toy barbecues, because of the danger of laceration from sharp edges. Chinese-made products account for more than 60 percent of the CSPC-announced recalls this year.
Also Thursday, officials in North Carolina and Georgia said tainted Chinese toothpaste had been shipped to prisons as well as some hospitals in the latter state. Some Florida hospitals also reported having the toothpaste, said FDA spokesman Doug Arbesfeld. He said diethylene glycol shouldn't be in toothpaste, but it poses a low risk in the concentrations found.
Meanwhile, China "has paid great attention" to the safety of its exports, especially food, said Commerce Ministry spokesman Wang Xinpei. "It can be said that the quality of China's exports all are guaranteed," Wang told reporters at a regularly scheduled briefing.
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