A resolution introduced Tuesday by Reps. Catherine Ceips, R-Beaufort, and Bill Herbkersman, R-Bluffton, primarily targets Asian shrimp containing the chemical chloramphenicol, found to cause cancer in humans.

It passed the House on Thursday and should head to the Senate next week.

Chloramphenicol is ground into the feed of Chinese farm-raised shrimp to help reduce bacteria and viruses that can destroy the crop.

"When I go out to a restaurant or I go to the grocery store, I want to know that what I'm buying is not going to kill me," said Darlene Dobson, a member of the board of directors for the activist group Southern Shrimp Alliance.

The chemical already is banned in the United States, as well as Canada and the European Union, but the United States lags far behind these countries in its ability to monitor Asian-grown shrimp, according to critics of current regulation.

The House resolution "expresses the concern É over the presence of chloramphenicol and other banned veterinary drugs in imported shrimp," and calls on the Food and Drug Administration to do a better job of ensuring a safer seafood supply.

"It makes sense good sense for the FDA to do their job," Ceips said. "It's really a health matter."

In November 2001, the FDA issued an alert calling attention to chloramphenicol and began testing shipments for the drug, which has been linked to leukemia and a deadly form of anemia in humans. But the FDA inspects only 2 percent of all seafood imports, and the agency's system for detecting chloramphenicol is inferior to the testing used by the European Union and Canada, according to U.S. Sen. Ernest Hollings' office.

Herbkersman said the resolution will pave the way for a bill that funds better monitoring of the drug's presence in imported shrimp. An easy solution to the problem, he said, is to buy locally caught shrimp, if for no other reason than to support struggling shrimpers.

"Demand the best in quality, and the best in quality is South Carolina shrimp," Herbkersman said. "We don't know what the concentration (is) in the (foreign) shrimp right now, and I don't think it's being tested enough."

More testing and tighter restrictions might tilt the competition scale in favor of domestic shrimpers, he said.

Capt. Bob Upton, owner of the Shrimp Shack and co-owner of Gay Fish Co. on St. Helena Island, said business is getting tougher as growing foreign imports drive more and more competition for local shrimpers.

"We're hurting this year because of the foreign imports," he said. "It's taken the shrimp down to an all-time low. People don't realize that every dollar that a shrimper puts back into the economy, that's a new dollar. And we need all those new dollars we can get."

Chloramphenicol is used by seafood exporters in Thailand and Vietnam, the top two shrimp exporters to the United States, according to Hollings, who sponsored the Seafood Safety Enforcement Act in Congress last year.

The United States imports more than 400,000 metric tons of shrimp annually.

The local shrimping season ending in January produced about 3 million pounds of commercial shrimp.

Independent testing performed by Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas recently has detected chloramphenicol in samples of imported shrimp from China and other countries at levels harmful to human health, according to reports.