When Andrew von Eschenbach, the acting head of the Food and Drug Administration, paid a courtesy visit to Sen. David Vitter last spring, the Louisiana Republican zeroed in on a key issue: What is the agency doing about little turtles?
The FDA, which regulates about one-quarter of the U.S. economy, is used to being barraged by the heavyweight companies that make pharmaceuticals, medical devices and food. But these days it is the target of a lobbying campaign that, ounce for ounce, ranks among the most intense of recent years: efforts by a handful of farmers to reverse a three-decade U.S. ban on baby turtles.
The agency prohibited sales of small turtles in 1975, after the then-popular pets were blamed for causing as many as 280,000 salmonella infections a year, mostly in children. The FDA edict almost completely barred U.S. commerce in "animals commonly known as turtles, tortoises (or) terrapins," with shells less than four inches long. The size was selected largely because bigger turtles couldn't easily be popped into children's mouths.
American turtle growers survived by selling the reptiles abroad. But pressure from the farmers' biggest market, China, sent wholesale turtle prices plunging by more than half two years ago, and farmers have been desperate to reopen the domestic market. So like other American industries in a regulatory bind, the growers are mounting a full-fledged Washington campaign -- soliciting endorsements from state officials, lining up research on turtle-borne bacteria and pleading to President Bush for intervention.
Their efforts center around the red-eared slider, or Trachemys scripta elegans, a species native to areas including the Mississippi delta and watery central and southern Louisiana. As long ago as the late 1950s, growers began stocking man-made breeding ponds with adult turtles, which laid their eggs on the ponds' sandy banks. Farmers collected the eggs, hatched them and, by the 1970s, were selling millions of quarter-size, green and yellow babies each year. The turtles, which can grow to a foot long and live for more than three decades, were typically sold in the U.S. as pets.
"They've got a personality. They're very, very friendly," says George F. "Sonny" White, Jr., 49, a former oil-industry worker who raises 400,000 red-eared sliders each year on his farm near Jonesville, La. "They swim, and you can take them out and play with them."
That's the problem, the FDA says. Turtles often carry salmonella in their digestive tracts. Infected turtles can convey the bacteria to their eggs. (The FDA also restricts the sale of turtle eggs in the U.S.) Though bacteria-carrying turtles may not show symptoms of illness, they can spread salmonella to their handlers. Ingesting it -- typically, after failing to wash hands after playing with a turtle -- can lead to vomiting, fever and cramps, even death in vulnerable patients. After the 1975 restriction, turtle-related infections appeared to nearly vanish.
Eddie Jolly, a bearded 52-year-old Louisianan who raises about 300,000 turtles a year on a farm he inherited from his grandfather, says he and his seven children haven't been infected by turtles. "I've been bit by them, scratched by them. I've drunk the water out of the breeding pond," he said. "You can eat them in a salad."
After the ban, Louisiana sued the FDA to overturn its tiny-turtle restrictions and lost. In 1998, a breeder petitioned the agency to allow baby turtles to be sold to adults; his request was rejected in 2003. The agency allows eggs and small turtles to be sold for some non-pet uses, including educational and scientific purposes.
Breeders say it wouldn't be profitable to raise turtles until their shells measure four inches. Most keep the small sliders at temperatures of 40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit after they hatch so the reptiles hibernate, without eating, for as long as eight months until they're sold. Turtles undergo hibernations in the wild, growers say.
Over the years, the breeders rebuilt their business by selling baby turtles in markets from Mexico to Asia. There are now more than 100 growers in Mississippi and Louisiana, where the industry is centered, state regulators say. The growers' rebound was so successful, in fact, that a group of them pleaded guilty in 1995 to forming a cartel to fix prices, a sort of OPEC for baby turtles.
Breeders pin their industry's 2004 crash on the Chinese market, where turtles serve as pets, food, even medicine. The Chinese were not only raising their own turtles, but they also held out on purchases of U.S. turtles, say breeders and shippers, forcing the American growers to sell low. Red-eared sliders, which breeders once sold wholesale for more than $1 apiece, plunged below 30 cents each, which farmers say is about their break-even point. Mr. White estimates his gross sales in 2006 will be about $80,000. In the years before prices crashed, he says he typically grossed $200,000.
Turtle growers ramped up a campaign to end the FDA's ban. Mr. Jolly, Mr. White and a partner, Mississippi businessman Walter Davis, staked out congressional campaign events and town-hall meetings, sometimes bringing crowds armed with pink fans bearing slogans like "Open U.S. Market for Turtle Farmers." They collected statements of support from Sen. Vitter, Louisiana Republican Rep. Rodney Alexander and Louisiana Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu, as well as from the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the American Farm Bureau Federation.
Officially, political pressure isn't supposed to influence the FDA's scientific decision-making, but the turtle-rights advocates say they have no other option. Messrs. Jolly, White and Davis, who founded a company two years ago to sell turtles and accessories if the ban ends, say they haven't made donations to individual politicians.
Mr. White also begged the president to get involved. "Mr. President, the turtle farmers of the state of Louisiana need your help desperately," he wrote in a November 2004 letter. He asked Mr. Bush to "contact me as soon as you have reviewed this information." Five months later, he got a letter from an FDA official reiterating the case for the ban.
By then, the turtle lobby had garnered additional support. Mark Mitchell, an associate professor of zoological medicine at Louisiana State University, demonstrated in a study that salmonella rates could be driven down -- to as low as 1 percent of turtle eggs and hatchlings, in one test -- by disinfecting eggs with dilutions of Clorox bleach and a pool cleaner. (Low concentrations aren't believed to harm the eggs.)
Dr. Mitchell's research was funded by the state of Louisiana, and part of the money came from a board funded by a tax on the turtle industry, and farmers paid his way to Washington recently to lobby the FDA. Dr. Mitchell says the ban is unfair because cleaned-up turtles, though not completely risk-free, are at least as safe as a number of other pets and foods.
The FDA countered that the studies didn't prove the salmonella could be fully eliminated or that the turtles wouldn't be re-infected. Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA veterinary medicine center, says turtles pose a particular risk because children handle them often. "The kids are exposed constantly," he says. Compared with bigger animals, such as iguanas, he adds, they "seem to fit in the mouth better."
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