A report recently released by the investigative arm of Congress acknowledges that foreign companies that are illegally mislabeling shrimp products to avoid paying anti-dumping duties are also evading domestic food safety laws. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other enforcement agencies have since confirmed the revelation as well.
The Southern Shrimp Alliance, which includes industry representatives from Louisiana, has repeatedly voiced concerns that importers shirking the antidumping fees were also having an impact on food safety. It wasn’t until the study, drafted by the Government Accountability Office, was released that the feds admitted there was a link.
The illegal “dumping” of foreign shrimp below the cost of production has taken its toll on Louisiana shrimpers. As a way to level the playing field, the U.S. Department of Commerce ordered that the dues be attached to certain imports.
Additionally, since June 2007, Chinese shrimp have been subject to a food safety “Import Alert” issued by the FDA. However, by transshipping or improperly labeling products, Chinese shrimp have been able to enter the United States despite the alert while simultaneously avoiding payment of antidumping duties, says John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance.
“Unethical companies are not just avoiding payment of hundreds of millions of dollars owed on unfairly traded shrimp when they mislabel or transship products,” Williams says. “They are also directly undermining the food safety protections intended to prevent unsafe shrimp from being sold to U.S. consumers.”
In September 2007, multiple shipments of suspected Chinese shrimp illegally transshipped through Malaysia tested positive for the presence of illegal, cancer-causing drugs, according to the GAO report.
“Incidents like these and others have led FDA officials, including a senior official in FDA’s Office of Food Safety, to reconsider the agency’s limited level of effort regarding economic fraud because they now believe that, if left unregulated, over time, seafood fraud may create food safety problems,” the report states.
The findings also suggest that the FDA has not previously been very responsive to consumer or industry complaints about mislabeling. For instance, one consumer complained about frozen shrimp labeled as a product of Mexico that had a second label underneath indicating it was a product of Thailand, a country subject to antidumping duties. The FDA took no action, according to the GAO report.
“The U.S cannot win the battle on food safety without addressing economic fraud such as mislabeling and transshipment,” Williams says. “These schemes are only possible because our laws permit anyone to export shrimp products to the United States and anyone to import shrimp into our country. There is no reason why U.S laws regulating the importation of shrimp should be significantly different from those governing imports of meat, poultry, and eggs.”
As for what happens next, the FDA is now working with Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security to target commodities that pose health and safety risks through “Operation Guardian,” which is an enforcement initiative to deal with imported substandard, tainted, and counterfeit products. Operation Guardian’s efforts have led to seizures of such commodities as pharmaceuticals, steel components, honey, shrimp and toys.
For a copy of the GAO report, click here.
