Engle: USDA should inspect catfish

JACKSON — Carol Engle, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Aquaculture and Fisheries at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff (UAPB), recently offered a scientific foundation for her support of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspections for catfish sold in the United States.

Engle, an agricultural economist and aquaculture researcher, has spent years studying global aquaculture practices and makes her remarks following two recent trips to review the Vietnamese aquaculture industry.

Engle in part wrote: “In Vietnam, the majority of fish being raised are raised in the Mekong delta region of Vietnam. Because there’s so little land, daily life really occurs on the water. What this means is that discharges of any kind of waste whatsoever are discharged directly into these waters. This includes discharges from factories, farms and run-off from different locations. It also includes human sewage and human waste, because Vietnam simply does not have the type of sewer systems that we have in the U.S. What is going on would not be allowed in the U.S.”