The following are excerpts from editorial opinions from around the world which may be of interest to Royal Gazette readers.

The Orlando Sentinel, Orlando, Florida,–on food import safety

More than 80 percent of the seafood that Americans eat comes from abroad, but the federal government's underfunded and overwhelmed food-safety system has been especially inept at intercepting contaminated imports. This summer, for example, state regulators in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana found banned antibiotics when they tested imported seafood that had cleared US ports.

While Congress needs to bolster federal food-safety agencies with more money, manpower and authority, it also needs to empower consumers with more information. Federal law requires that seafood sold in grocery stores be labeled by its country of origin, but there is no corresponding requirement for fish served in restaurants. Congress has a good opportunity to begin moving in that direction by passing a bill that would require country-of-origin labeling for restaurant catfish.

It makes sense to start with catfish, because most of it is consumed in restaurants. Despite its reputation as an American fish, a third of the US catfish supply comes from overseas. Much of it is from China, where polluted conditions lead many fish farmers to use antibiotics and other drugs and chemicals banned in the US.

Labeling catfish in restaurants will better protect consumers and send a strong signal to fish farmers to clean up their act. Those benefits outweigh whatever cost or complications labeling presents. Federal agencies need to do a much better job screening seafood and other imports. Meanwhile, consumers need all the tools they can get to protect themselves.

The Times-Picayune, New Orleans,–on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Louisianians who lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina or its aftermath deserve to be remembered by name, but two years after the storm, there is no complete list of the dead nor any plans to compile one.

Anonymity is no way to honor the lost or comfort their survivors. Human beings have a strong need to memorialize the dead, whether on markers in cemeteries or on large memorials, like those that honour the Vietnam War dead and the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing. ...

So far, no agency has stepped forward to take on the job of compiling a complete list of the dead. But it needs to be done, not only for closure but also to more fully understand the consequences of a disaster like Katrina and make better plans for the next storm. Hurricane Katrina kept killing people long after it made landfall on August 29, 2005. Sick, elderly and fragile evacuees escaped the storm only to die in other states, but it's difficult to ascertain which deaths were storm-related based on death certificates alone.

That's what state epidemiologist Raoult Ratard and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Protection are doing, though. They are examining death certificates, but they are not calling relatives for more information. ... Privacy concerns are not insurmountable. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the memorial that will be erected in lower Manhattan will carry their names. A monument in St. Bernard Parish lists the names of those who died there. ...

There probably will never be a complete list of everyone who died as a result of this disaster. Some bodies will never be found. Others can't be identified. But an effort to make as full an accounting as possible should be made, for the sake of the living as well as the dead.