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Business & Economics
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The Fishy Politics: Why Your Catfish is Inspected by the USDA, Not the FDA
It's a bizarre piece of food trivia: catfish is the only seafood regulated by the USDA, just like beef and chicken. This isn't a random quirk, but the result of a decades-long political battle involving Southern farmers, foreign competition, and powerful lobbying in Washington, D.C.
Stroll through the seafood aisle of your local supermarket and you’ll find a vast array of fish and shellfish, all residing under the watchful, if somewhat infrequent, eye of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). All, that is, except for one. In a strange twist of bureaucratic logic, catfish is the only aquatic creature in the United States that is not considered seafood for regulatory purposes. Instead, it’s treated like a cow or a chicken, falling under the stringent, continuous inspection of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
This isn't just a quirky footnote in a government manual; it's the result of a fierce political and economic battle that pitted Southern farmers against Asian importers, a story of lobbying, protectionism, and a fight over the very definition of a fish.
The Rise of a Southern Industry
To understand why catfish gets the VIP treatment from the USDA, we have to go back to the 1980s. Catfish farming exploded across the American South, particularly in states like Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas. It became a billion-dollar industry and a source of immense regional pride. American-farmed channel catfish was on dinner plates across the country. But by the early 2000s, a formidable competitor emerged from the waters of Vietnam: the pangasius, a related but different species that was cheaper to raise and could be sold at a much lower price.
Initially, these imports were often labeled and sold simply as “catfish,” directly competing with the American product. The domestic Catfish Farmers of America, a powerful lobbying group, sprang into action. Their first victory came in 2002, with a law that stipulated only fish from the family Ictaluridae could be legally marketed as “catfish” in the United States. The Vietnamese imports were now sold as basa or swai, but the economic pressure remained.
The Legislative Coup
The American catfish industry needed a stronger shield. They found it in the 2008 Farm Bill. Lobbyists successfully argued for a provision that would move the inspection of all fish in the order Siluriformes (the scientific order that includes both American and Vietnamese catfish) from the FDA to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
The official reasoning was food safety. Proponents argued that the USDA’s inspection system was far more rigorous than the FDA’s. As Zach Lyons, a policy analyst, told Atlas Obscura:
“The USDA has a far more robust, and you could say burdensome, inspection regime. They inspect every single carcass of a meat or poultry animal. The FDA might come to a seafood facility once a year, once every five years.”
On paper, it sounded like a win for consumer safety. In reality, it was a masterful act of economic protectionism. By forcing foreign catfish producers to meet the USDA’s expensive and continuous inspection standards—which require inspectors to be present in processing plants daily—it created a significant trade barrier that was difficult and costly for Vietnamese exporters to overcome.
A Wasteful Fish Fight?
The move was controversial from the start. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) repeatedly criticized the program, calling it duplicative and wasteful. In a 2012 report, the GAO estimated the program would cost taxpayers $14 million annually and noted that it could “heighten the risk of the United States violating its international trade commitments.” They saw no evidence that catfish were inherently less safe than any other seafood regulated by the FDA.
For years, figures like the late Senator John McCain fought to repeal what he famously called “pork-barrel politics at its worst,” but the “Catfish Caucus” held strong. The program has survived multiple repeal attempts, cementing its strange place in American food regulation.
So the next time you see a USDA seal of inspection on a package of catfish fillets, you’ll know the story behind it. It’s not just about food safety; it’s a story of how a humble bottom-feeder became a pawn in a high-stakes game of lobbying, international trade, and good old-fashioned American politics.