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- Title
Bottomfeeding: How The USDA's Noodling With Catfish Regulations Violates the United States' WTO Obligations.
- Authors
Fernandez Gold, Chelsea
- Abstract
In 2008, Congress passed the Farm Bill with an amendment to the Federal Meat Inspection Act, which shifted the authority to regulate catfish and catfish products from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), an agency that had no history of overseeing the inspection of seafood. The USDA, as required by law, drafted a proposed rule detailing this regulatory shift and sent it to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on June 3, 2014; the rule was then finalized on November 25, 2015. While the domestic catfish industry and its supporters advocated for the speedy publication of the final USDA rule, foreign exporters of catfish to the United States considered it to be a thinly veiled attempt to prevent the entry of catfish from countries like Vietnam. Given that the rule has been finalized, this Article details the set of allegations that Vietnam, or any foreign exporter of catfish, could bring before a World Trade Organization (WTO) Panel in which it would assert a violation of the WTO's Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures. Ultimately, this Article concludes that, if the United States seeks to avoid a WTO dispute settlement, the only recourse is to repeal the provisions contained within the 2008 and 2014 Farm Bills and allow the authority to inspect catfish and catfish products to revert to the FDA.
- Subjects
UNITED States; AGRICULTURAL laws; UNITED States. Dept. of Agriculture; UNITED States. Food &; Drug Administration; WORLD Trade Organization; UNITED States. Congress; FEDERAL Meat Inspection Act of 1906 (U.S.)
- Publication
Berkeley Journal of International Law, 2015, Vol 33, Issue 2, p348
- ISSN
1085-5718
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.15779/Z38K264