The new five-year farm bill the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate compromised on this week failed to cut out the U.S. catfish inspection program, putting a barrier on catfish imports into the United States.
As written into the 2008 Farm Bill, the $14 million per year program would assign inspection of catfish imports to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), a rung of the inspection chain that could pose serious threats to imports.
Undercurrent News, in a report written from the perspective of exporters of catfish into the United States, blamed Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran for getting a repeal of the USDA inspection requirement scratched from the Farm Bill.
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