(NaturalNews) A couple from Arizona was shocked recently when they found that fresh salmon they had just purchased from a local grocery store was infested with slimy worms - a preview what will likely become more common in the years ahead as Congress votes to remove country-of-origin labeling on meat, poultry and fish.

Jen Chafitz, of Peoria, Ariz., had made her usual shopping trip to a local Fry's supermarket recently and picked out some supposedly fresh salmon filet to fix for dinner that night.

At home about six hours later, however, she made the startling discovery. As she was preparing dinner, she removed the fish from the refrigerator and noticed two worms slithering underneath the packaging.

"Its head was sticking out of the fish," Chafitz said told the local ABC affiliate. "Standing there I felt like something was crawling on me, it was really gross."

Immediately she hollered into the next room for her husband, who ran into the kitchen and was just as stunned by what his wife had found, as the worms continued to slither across the fish.

Before Jen took the fish back to Fry's in a bid to alert managers the couple made a video of what they had found.

ABC 15 reported that a representative from the supermarket said the store offered a full refund of the couple's money and that managers would be contacting the distributor to check on quality control and make sure they are up to standards.

Contamination could have been widespread

The local station further reported:

Dustin decided to share the video on a neighborhood Facebook page in hopes of making people more aware of a potential problem. Never seeing anything like this he was concerned the worms could've contaminated other filets in the batch.

"We're a close community and it felt like I needed to" let others know what the couple had found, Dustin said.

Meanwhile, Jen said she has switched to a more vegetarian-based diet, adding that it might be quite some time before she'll be able to eat fish or even chicken again.

While the Arizona Department of Environmental Health said that parasites can occasionally show up in fish and that the food would be safe to eat if cooked to 140-degrees Fahrenheit, it's a safe bet that few Americans would either want to take that risk or have the stomach to eat worm-infested fish no matter how high the cooking temperature.

What's more, the department added that if you are not able to identify the parasite the health risk isn't worth it anyway and that such contaminated foods ought to be thrown out and the store where it was purchased notified immediately.

Are such incidents guaranteed to increase? Yes, say opponents of a recent congressional vote to eliminate country-of-origin labeling on meats and poultry imported into the U.S.

Voting to provide consumers with less, not more, information about their food

As NaturalNews has reported, in late May the House Agriculture Committee voted overwhelmingly (38-6) in recent days to repeal a "country of origin" law for beef, pork and poultry, just two days after the globalist World Trade Organization ruled against portions of the U.S. requirement.

The labels were required to inform customers where their meat came from, e.g. "born in Canada, raised and slaughtered in the United States," or "born, raised and slaughtered in the United States."

The WTO ruled that the U.S. labeling requirement put Canadian and Mexican livestock at a disadvantage. The global trade panel rejected a U.S. appeal following a similar WTO ruling last year.

Meat producers and too many in Congress had sought repeal of U.S. laws requiring the labeling, citing mostly higher costs of compliance.

But when it comes to public health, most Americans would probably agree that, if given the choice, they'd rather know more about imported products than less. While meat standards in Canada are generally comparable to U.S. standards, Mexican government standards are not - and what's more, they are not as uniformly enforced.

No matter. As usual, the consumer loses and the powerful global interests win.

Sources:

http://www.mirror.co.uk

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://www.abc15.com