HACCP Hassles.

There are serious deficiencies in a program intended to ensure the safety of seafood sold in the United States, according to a January 2001 report issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO). Food Safety: Federal Oversight of Seafood Does Not Sufficiently Protect Consumers criticizes the effectiveness of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in overseeing the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP, pronounced "hassip") system for seafood. HACCP programs aim to prevent food safety problems in several different categories rather than find them after they occur. But according to FDA statistics, by 1999 only 44% of seafood firms had a complete HACCP plan.

Under HACCP, processors develop individualized plans detailing "critical control points" and document their monitoring of these critical areas. Critical control points are steps or procedures in production where food safety hazards are especially likely to occur if precautions aren't taken. For example, a critical control point in the handling of tuna involves keeping the fish cold enough to prevent the formation of the histamines that cause scombroid poisoning. Although seafood processors and distributors are responsible for developing their own HACCP plans, a process that can be costly and time-consuming, the FDA must ultimately ensure compliance.

According to the National Seafood Industry HACCP Implementation Report, issued by New York Sea Grant in April 2000, HACCP plans are proportionately more expensive for small companies than for large ones. Companies with sales of under $500,000 a year spend about 3% of their income on HACCP programs, compared to about 0.5% by companies with average annual sales of over $3 million.

"HACCP is a great concept but has been very poorly implemented," says Tony Corbo, a lobbyist for Public Citizen, a Washington, D.C.-based consumer rights group. "To do their job properly, [the FDA is] going to need a huge increase in staff," says Corbo. The official FDA response to the report agrees that the seafood HACCP program has deficiencies, and the agency has requested additional funds from Congress to improve safety inspections, including user fees to be charged to seafood import-export companies.

No data are available on how HACCP has affected the incidence of seafood-related illness; the most recent estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention date from 1997, the year the seafood HACCP program was established. By those estimates, contaminated finfish and crustaceans cause about 15% of the 76 million foodborne illnesses reported in the United States each year. More than 80% of the seafood-related outbreaks were caused by scombrotoxin or ciguatoxin, heat-resistant toxins found in warmwater species of fish.

The report criticized the FDA for implementing the seafood HACCP program before establishing baseline levels of seafood contamination (in contrast, the U.S. Department of Agriculture established baseline contamination levels before implementing meat and poultry HACCP programs). The GAO further questioned the lack of HACCP standards for fishing vessels. To this charge, the FDA counters that most processing on vessels is minimal--heading and gutting--and that these steps can actually enhance seafood quality by allowing fish to cool faster and removing blood and bacteria-harboring internal organs, which can contribute to spoilage. The GAO report also expressed concern that, although the FDA has issued warnings about methylmercury contamination in seafood, exposure to this highly toxic substance "is not identified or covered in FDA's seafood guide as a hazard reasonably likely to occur."

The GAO does recognize the seafood HACCP program's successes. FDA inspections of HACCP plans are now scheduled to occur yearly instead of once every four years. In addition, many seafood firms report improving safety procedures, primarily in sanitation and temperature control, as a result of the HACCP program, according to the New York Sea Grant report.

However, processors are frustrated because they don't know if improvements in procedures have resulted in safer seafood reaching consumers, says Richard Gutting, Jr., president of the National Fisheries Institute, an Arlington, Virginia-based trade association. Gutting says processors want to see a scientific basis for FDA activities. "What neither the GAO nor the FDA have done is complete a scientific analysis of the relationship between frequency of inspection and levels of compliance," says Gutting. The FDA is currently working on such a study, according to Philip C. Spiller, director of the FDA Office of Seafood.