Fact Checker: Claim that Trans Pacific trade deal would spur a 'flood' of frozen shrimp

"This [Consumer Reports] study underlines how harmful it would be to proceed with the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal without addressing food safety. TPP would cause real threats to our health by making it even easier for unsafe seafood to reach our markets. With more imports flooding in from Vietnam and Malaysia, it would become harder for the FDA's inspectors to do their jobs."

- Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, statement issued on Consumer Reports Frozen Shrimp study, April 24, 2015

A report by Consumer Reports magazine on bacteria and antibiotics found in frozen shrimp - 94 percent of which is imported in the United States - prompted Rep. DeLauro to issue a statement warning of "more imports flooding in from Vietnam and Malaysia" because of the pending 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership trade deal will make it harder for Food and Drug Administrators to do their jobs.

DeLauro is a fierce opponent of giving President Barack Obama enhanced trade negotiating authority to complete the deal. As the statement noted, DeLauro is the former chairman (and still a member) of the Appropriations Committee panel overseeing the FDA, where presumably she has been in a position to enhance funding for seafood inspections. Her statement said that the FDA currently does not have the resources to inspect more than one percent of frozen shrimp imports.

Consumer Reports said that 83 percent of the shrimp from Bangladesh had bacteria, followed by India (74 percent), Indonesia (69 percent), Ecuador (61 percent), Vietnam (58 percent), Thailand (42 percent), Argentina (33 percent) and the United States (20 percent). Malaysia was not listed in the report.

Food safety issues aside - certainly media reporting on Vietnamese shrimp farms sometimes leaves a queasy feeling - would the TPP spur a flood of frozen shrimp imports from Vietnam and Malaysia?

The TPP is a free trade deal, meaning it will eliminate many tariffs. But here's the funny thing: no frozen shrimp is subject to duties if a country, such as Vietnam and Malaysia, has most favored nation trading status.

Now, some Vietnamese importers are subject to anti-dumping duties because the Commerce Department, at the urging of domestic producers, brought a case against them. (The rate was recently cut.) But such trade remedies would still be available under the TPP.

Sara Lonardo, communications director for DeLauro, noted that the TPP "will reduce tariffs on 76 lines of seafood, including two lines of shrimp that are currently set at five percent." (This is the packaged meals in which shrimp is a component and barely imported from the countries in question.)

"Free trade deals with favorable provisions for partner nations will stimulate investment and increase seafood imports," she added. "Many of the provisions in the TPP designed to make the agreement appealing for partner nations, such as the chapters on investment, dispute settlement, and sanitary/phytosanitary provisions, would encourage more investment in TPP countries as an export platform to the United States - at the expense of our current leading seafood trading partners."

She argued that "nowhere do we talk about removing tariffs. We talk about the impact on regulations. Which is because the TPP is not just about tariffs, it is about the impact on our regulations and laws." She added that "our understanding of the sanitary/phytosanitary provisions is that the TPP would limit our ability to stop unsafe food from entering U.S. commerce." (Administration officials dispute that, saying TPP would seek to improve the systems in other countries and make it harder for them to evade responsibility.)

The FDA recently rejected 107 shipments of frozen shrimp, mainly from Malaysia and Vietnam, because antibiotics residues were found, prompting the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers to warn farmers to improve their practices. The number of shipments rejected by the FDA has increased 224 percent in the first two months of the year, to the highest rate in 10 years.

DeLauro's statement certainly gives the impression that frozen shrimp exports would be "flooding" into the United States from Vietnam and Malaysia because of the lower tariffs inherent in the agreement. Yet her staff can only point to two minor shrimp lines that would be affected, which were not even featured in the Consumer Reports article. Frozen shrimp already enter the United States duty free - and TPP would not change that.

Certainly food safety is an important issue, as documented by Consumer Reports. Yet, in theory, if TPP improves Vietnam's sanitary and phytosanitary systems, then Ecuador, Indonesia, Bangladesh and India might lose market share - and they fare even worse in the bacteria tests.

In any case, it is misleading for DeLauro to suggest that the free-trade deal would result in more frozen shrimp imports "flooding in from Vietnam and Malaysia" when trade in frozen shrimp already is duty-free.