Very little US food is inspected before it is imported, according to new data.

Just 1.3 percent of fish, vegetables, fruit and other food is inspected - yet those government inspections regularly reveal food unfit for human consumption.

With only a minuscule percentage of shipments inspected, food safety experts say the US is vulnerable to harm from abroad, where rules and regulations governing food production are often more lax than they are in America.

"The Food and Drug Administration doesn't have enough resources or control over this situation presently," said Mike Doyle, director of the University of Georgia's Centre for Food Safety, which works with industry to improve safety.

Last month alone, the US detained nearly 850 shipments of grains, fish, vegetables, nuts, spice, oils and other imported foods for issues ranging from filth to unsafe food-colouring to contamination with pesticides to salmonella.

"Never before in history have we had the sort of system that we have now, meaning a globalisation of the food supply," said Robert Brackett, director of the FDA's Centre for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

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