Earlier this year the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that formally acknowledges that companies illegally mislabeling seafood products in order to avoid paying anti-dumping duties are also evading U.S. food safety laws. While the report did not specifically identify tilapia as a mislabeled fish, it’s important for all of us to understand the lengths that certain companies will go to in order to avoid duties or taxes.
What is Seafood Fraud?
The Seafood Fraud report identifies seafood fraud as a variety of illegal activities done that occur at various points in the seafood supply chain, and result in economic gain to the seller. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in fiscal year 2007, over 80 percent of the seafood consumed in the US was imported, most frequently from Canada, China, and Thailand. These products enter the country through an importer and before moving on to a distributor, who sells them to grocery stores and restaurants.
Seafood fraud typically involves mislabeling seafood products. The following are examples of specific techniques:
Transshipment
This involves shipping seafood to another country before sending it on to the US so that the product is labeled with a different country of origin, therefore avoiding regulatory controls such as FDA import alerts.
Over-treating
Using excess breading, water-retaining chemicals, or over-glaze with ice can artificially increase the weight of seafood products.
Species Substitution
Seafood products are often labeled as a lower market value species to increase the seller’s profit.
Short-weighting
This refers to the practice of labeling packages of seafood as weighing more than they actually do.
The report gives a specific example of a Vietnamese exporter shipping thousands of pounds of catfish into the United States labeled as grouper. His intention was to avoid paying antidumping duties that the Department of Commerce had imposed on Vietnamese catfish.
“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.”
According to the report, FDA has not previously been very responsive to consumer or industry complaints about mislabeling. 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. FDA took no action according to the GAO.
The FDA is now working with Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Homeland Security, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement 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. SSA will continue to work with these agencies to identify unlawful evasion of U.S. laws.
Food safety: it’s a big deal. Do you know where your seafood comes from?
