Some prominent Senate Democrats are fighting a bid by the U.S. catfish industry and its Southern allies on Capitol Hill to impose new inspections on fast-growing Vietnamese imports of the fish.
In a letter dated Wednesday, eight senators — including Dick Durbin of Illinois and John Kerry of Massachusetts — warned Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack that he could spark a trade war if Asian fish are included in a new inspection regime that was pushed through Congress last year at the urging of U.S. producers.
The senators said it wasn’t their intent to include the Vietnamese fish in the new system when it was passed in last year’s massive farm bill. Doing so, they wrote, would serve as a "de facto ban on exports from key trading partners."
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