January 31, 2014 — The USDA catfish inspection program, first authorized in 2008, is continued in the 2014 farm bill, which also includes a first-of-its-kind “crop insurance” program for catfish farmers.
Most of the so-called political experts were predicting it would go the other way. One paid prognosticator went so far as to suggest that “Southern catfish farmers” were going to be “hooked and filleted” by the new farm bill. But all those who said the USDA catfish inspection program was a goner were wrong.
USDA isn’t saying what happens next. The agency wants to wait for the Senate vote before commenting. President Obama has already said he will sign the farm bill, a product of a House-Senate Conference Committee that is already two years overdue.
Behind every major policy decision in Washington, D.C., there are winners and losers. For this round, the winners are the Catfish Farmers of America, based in tiny Indianola, MS, and the loser is the Virginia-based National Fisheries Institute.
Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for NFI, insisted in the seafood industry’s Undercurrent News that his organization of seafood importers did not lose in the farm bill, but that the USDA’s catfish inspection program repeal language was stripped out by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).
As the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Cochran was among the handful of leaders who decided what was going to be in the final deal that both the House and Senate would vote on. Like USDA, those working on the farm-raised catfish side also are not talking on the record. It seems likely, however, that Cochran was going to make his play late and that it was going to be big – sort of like the way the Seattle Seahawks win football games. So the 2014 farm bill added crop insurance to the previously won USDA inspection program.
Read the full story at Food Saftey News