November 17, 2020 — U.S. foodservice organizations protested new restrictions on indoor restaurant dining being implemented in several states and cities due to soaring coronavirus cases across the country.
The U.S. reported more than 166,000 new COVID-19 cases on 17 November, and related hospitalizations rose to a record 73,014.
September 11, 2020 — The following was released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
A North Carolina man pleaded guilty today before U.S. District Judge James C. Dever III in the Eastern District of North Carolina on charges that his company, Garland F. Fulcher Seafood Company Inc. (Garland Fulcher), at his direction, falsely labeled hundreds of thousands dollars’ worth of foreign crabmeat as “Product of USA.”
According to information in the public record, Jeffrey A. Styron was the treasurer of the corporate board of officers for Garland Fulcher, a North Carolina company engaged in the business of purchasing, processing, packaging, transporting and selling seafood and seafood products, including crabmeat from domestically harvested blue crab.
As treasurer, Styron was responsible for overseeing the daily operations of the company’s crab-related business, which involved managing and directing employees of the company with respect to the processing, packaging, and labeling of crab meat. Styron pleaded guilty to a one-count information charging him with substituting foreign crabmeat for domestic blue crab and, as part of the plea, Styron admitted to falsely labeling crabmeat with a retail market value of at least $250,000 dollars, which was sold primarily to small seafood retailers and restaurants.
“Blue crabs are a classic American seafood product and a vital resource for coastal communities in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and other parts of the United States,” said Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Bossert Clark for the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division. “This investigation is part of the department’s mission to work with our law enforcement partners in the protection of Atlantic blue crab populations and other marine resources.”
“Seafood mislabeling is consumer fraud that undermines efforts of hardworking, honest fisherman and the free market by devaluing the price of domestic seafood,” said U.S. Attorney Robert J. Higdon Jr. for the Eastern District of North Carolina. “In this case, the fraudulent scheme artificially deflated the cost of domestic blue crab and gave Styron and Garland Fulcher Seafood an unacceptable and unfair economic advantage over law-abiding competitors.”
August 25, 2020 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused only 37 seafood entry lines in July, continuing a trend where federal officials were rejecting a historically low number of products.
According to the Southern Shrimp Alliance, that amount is by far a record low for the month. It’s only 21.3 percent of this historical average the alliance has tracked since 2002. It’s also significantly lower than the previous record low of 91 entry lines, which occurred last year.
November 20, 2019 — The following was released by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration:
FDA and state health authorities are investigating incidents of scombrotoxin fish poisoning linked to yellowfin tuna, also sometimes called ahi tuna. As a result of this investigation, FDA has placed Truong Phu Xanh Co, LTD of Vietnam on Import Alert, which provides information to FDA field staff that they may detain the firm’s yellowfin tuna without physical examination. Detained product will not enter the United States unless the importer proves that it meets U.S. food safety standards.
FDA asked for the supplier of yellowfin tuna associated with most of the illnesses, Truong Phu Xanh Co., LTD of Vietnam, to initiate a voluntary recall of all of its imported yellowfin tuna with production dates from January 2019 to the present. At this time, the firm has not recalled any product.
September 9, 2019 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers not to eat raw yellowfin tuna steaks from several Kroger stores after some consumers became ill with scombroid poisoning.
On 4 September, the FDA became aware of multiple scombroid poisoning cases in individuals who consumed tuna steaks purchased from three separate Kroger retail locations in Ohio, the agency said in a press release.
June 4, 2019 — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released the results of a wide-scale study investigating the presence of so-called “forever chemicals” in U.S. supermarket food.
The FDA found levels of per- and polyfluoroalykyl (PFAs) and other fluorocarbon resins – which are grease-proofing agents used in non-stick cookware, fast food wrappers, microwave popcorn bags and numerous other foodservice and food retail applications in many foods, including seafood – in market basket sampling done at grocery stores and supermarkets in three undisclosed U.S. cities in the mid-Atlantic region.
The FDA found PFAs at levels ranging from 134 parts per trillion to 865 parts per trillion in tilapia, cod, salmon, shrimp, and catfish, as well as numerous meat products, according to an FDA presentation at the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry in late May, the Associated Press reported.
FDA spokesperson Tara Rabin told the AP that her agency rated PFAs as “not likely to be a human health concern,” but the levels of chemical contamination found in the seafood tested were more than double the FDA’s recommended 70-parts-per-trillion limit for safe drinking water.
March 7, 2019 — The rash of wild and farmed catfish recalls in the United States since the beginning of this year may be caused by confusion over which regulatory agency oversees catfish inspections.
More than a year after a controversial regulation shifting inspections of all siluriformes (catfish) from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) went into effect, many catfish importers – and some domestic suppliers – remain unaware of the change, sources told SeafoodSource.
In addition, FSIS “discovered a lesser known species of siluriformes fish (sheat) in commerce without FSIS inspection, resulting in a recall,” Buck McKay, public affairs specialist with FSIS, told SeafoodSource.
“Working with our federal partners at Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and the FDA, FSIS identified additional recent shipments of this fish imported by other companies resulting in two additional recalls,” McKay said.
FSIS identified a fourth product in commerce while performing effectiveness checks for one of the recalls.
As a result, five importers were forced to recall thousands of pounds of catfish that were not presented for re-inspection by FSIS. The agency did not find a food safety risk with the catfish.
January 23, 2019 — The ongoing partial shutdown of the U.S. government, which is entering its second month, has caused headaches for Leslie Harlow, the owner of Hancock, Maine-based Sullivan Harbor Farm Smokehouse.
Harlow, who is seeking to reopen the salmon smoking operation after it closed several years ago, is awaiting licensing approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after a final inspection took place in December.
“Our final paperwork is sitting on the desk of an FDA inspector, who currently is not working due to the shutdown,” Harlow said.
November 16, 2018 — Seafood fraud/mislabeled seafood is a permanent topic in the sustainable fisheries space. Since 2015, news sources such as The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and the Economist have published stories on the topic of seafood fraud. Nearly every ocean conservation NGO has commented or contributed to the discourse, but Oceana has led the conversation. Oceana has an entire campaign aimed at exposing and reducing seafood fraud globally. Since 2011, they have published sixteen reports on seafood fraud—most recently, a report from Oceana Canada.
There are important differences between seafood fraud and fraud in other food systems. Language barriers, multiple acceptable market names, the sheer quantity of seafood species compared to other animal proteins, and the simple fact that wild capture adds a slew of complications compared to controlled terrestrial farming, should set a different expectation level for seafood labeling standards. There are so many chances for mistakes or miscommunication to happen—far more than any other food supply chain. But the seafood fraud discourse (largely led by Oceana) often excludes these realities and instead points fingers at fishermen, restaurateurs, and retailers for duping their customers.
In this post, I take a look at Oceana Canada’s methodology for determining “fraud” in its most recent report. I consider the results of Oceana’s report through the lens of the seafood and restaurant industries and attempt to illustrate the difference between legitimate fraud and unintentional mislabeling.
Oceana defines Seafood Fraud as, “the practice of misleading consumers about their seafood in order to increase profits.” This is an important distinction from the term “mislabeled” because it assigns an intent to deceive. Fraud is on purpose, whereas mislabeling could be an accident. Most reports on this subject today infer that the seafood industry is actively deceiving consumers on a broad scale, across the most commonly consumed species, both domestically and internationally.
Oceana’s methodology for conducting its seafood fraud reports is suspect. In this post, I focus on the most recent Canadian study, but my criticisms apply to all seafood fraud reports that use the same methods. Generally, Oceana collects seafood samples, DNA tests them, then matches the DNA results to outdated government guidelines. The samples they collect are purposefully not representative of seafood consumption habits. In Oceana Canada’s 2018 report, 382 seafood samples from 177 restaurants and retailers across the country were tested. The aim was to focus on cod, halibut, snapper, tuna, salmon and sole because these species historically, “have the highest rates of species substitution.” The specific species sampled were chosen because of past studies on seafood mislabeling, i.e. they were not randomly sampled. DNA testing then determined if these samples met the minimum labelling requirements as defined by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA), an equivalent of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
This nonrandom sampling is consistent with previous seafood fraud studies from Oceana. A key parallel across Oceana’s seafood fraud investigations is that “targeted fish of interest” are the focus. Oceana Canada encouraged participants to aim for species that are often marked in other fraud studies, meaning the sample in these studies is not indicative of national seafood consumption rates on average, but instead represents very specific species that have proven to present high rates of mislabeling in previous research.
Of the 382 seafood samples tested in Canada, 168 (44%) were found to be fraudulent, meaning the names of the species did not align with the acceptable market names determined by CFIA standards.
August 24, 2018 — The United States government is trying to permanently stop a New York-based seafood processor from preparing and distributing its fish balls and other products.
At the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal complaint against Brooklyn, New York-based Foo Yuan Food Products Company, alleging that the seafood company failed to adequately control the risk of Clostridium botulinum and Listeria monocytogenes growth and toxin formation in susceptible fish and fishery products.
The complaint seeks to permanently enjoin Foo Yuan Food Products, Owner and President Hsing Chang, and Secretary Susan Chang from preparing and distributing adulterated seafood products in violation of federal law.
Foo Yuan prepares, packs, and distributes refrigerated and frozen ready-to-eat fish balls, fried fish cakes, and fried fish balls.
“When food processors ignore federal laws concerning the preparation of food, they subject the public to serious health risks,” said Attorney Richard P. Donoghue, in a statement. “The Department of Justice has asked the Court to stop the defendants from processing, packaging or distributing any more food until they establish that they can comply with federal laws and regulations designed to avert those health risks.”