Artemia Permitting Update

Last week we passed on a story from Shrimp News International (thanks to a heads up from Bob Rosenberry) that Desert Lake Technologies, a well established company that specializes in hatchery feeds, had several shipments of artemia cysts seized by the Food and Drug Administration and was informed that although they have been used for many years in the USA as larval feed, artemia are not GRAS (Generally Recognized as Safe) and therefore cannot be used in aquaculture nor the ornamental fish industry as larval feed (See: http://aquafeed.blogspot.com/2010/03/artemia-cysts-are-no-longer-permitted.html).

On Monday, Howard Newman, president and owner of Desert Lake Technologies, told Aquafeed.com that his container of 20 tonnes of raw Artemia cysts was finally on its way to him and that the frozen marine polychaetes had also been released by FDA. At time of writing FDA was still holding Newman's decapsulated Artemia cysts but he was optimistic that this would also be resolved. 

"I am sure that the amount of industry emails and phone calls etc have played an important part in this.", Newman said. "Now we are left with "what do we do next to prevent this from reoccurring"?, Newman said.  His Attornies are petitioning to get Artemia cysts grandfathered since he has provided the FDA with ample peer reviewed papers showing use of Artemia prior to the GRAS certification mandate of 1958.  Now, we wait and see what is going to happen.
 
This situation, is critical to the survival of the U.S. shrimp industry and is far from resolved; Richard Sellers, who heads the American Feed Industry Association's feed legislative and regulatory activities with FDA, AAFCO and the state feed control agencies, confirmed to Aquafeed.com that artemia are not – nor ever have been – approved for feed use in the USA.