1-12 IAN Catfish Loophole

 What goes into the making of a catfish? Seems like a ridiculous question doesn’t it? The answer should be good clean water and food. Maybe not. A recent conversation with catfish producer Chip Holmes was very sobering. You may want to ask your local restaurant about the country of origin for any catfish that you consume. As it turns out, just as they say about the tax code, there are some huge  and dangerous loopholes that foreign countries can use. Here is Chip.  “We need to be very careful about importing fish from either country. I don’t have enough bad things to say about the fish from Vietnam. And the fish in China, we cannot oversee the chemicals that are put into those fish and brought into America. It may not be totally factual but it seems that the Chinese are powerful enough to be able to send boats over here full of fish from China and if we intercept those fish and see that there is a chemical that might not meet specifications for US consumption, those fish are then refused, the fish are back out to sea, and they surface somewhere else 200- 300 miles down the coast, and they find a way through a loophole to get those fish in. That needs to be stopped, it needs to be addressed and not just talked about, it is a serious issue and I hope that the USDA will finally put her foot down and say no, America deserves better than this.”