Over the weekend, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published detailed data regarding 89 seafood entry line refusals in April, of which fifteen (16.9%) were for shrimp for reasons related to banned antibiotics.
As indicated in the table below, in the first four months of 2024, the FDA has already refused more than half of the total entry lines of shrimp refused for banned antibiotics during all of last year.
The fifteen entry lines of shrimp refused for banned antibiotics in April were for shipments of shrimp from an exporter in China and three exporters in India. All four exporters currently operate under Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certifications:
- Shandong Tongxing Foodstuffs Co., Ltd. (China), a company that currently operates under a three-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification for its processing plant (P10847), but that is not on the green list of Import Alert 16-131 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Aquacultured, Shrimp, Dace, and Eel from China – Presence of New Animal Drugs and/or Unsafe Food Additives”), had ten entry lines refused for breaded shrimp contaminated with veterinary drug residues and unsafe additives by the Division of West Coast Imports on April 12, 2024;
- Kader Exports Private Limited, Unit 5 (India), a company that currently operates under a four-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification for its Unit 05 processing plant (P10460), with additional BAP certifications for multiple shrimp farms, and that was added to Import Alert 16-129 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Seafood Products Due to Nitrofurans”) for its shipments of shrimp on April 1, 2024, had one entry line refused for shrimp contaminated with nitrofurans, veterinary drug residues, and for filth by the Division of West Coast Imports on April 12, 2024;
- B-One Business House Pvt. Ltd. (India), a company that currently operates under a four-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification for its processing plant (P10779), with additional BAP certifications for multiple shrimp farms, and that is not currently listed on Import Alert 16-124 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Aquaculture Seafood Products Due to Unapproved Drugs”), Import Alert 16-127 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Crustaceans Due to Chloramphenicol”), or Import Alert 16-129 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Seafood Products Due to Nitrofurans”), had one entry line refused for shrimp contaminated with veterinary drug residues and nitrofurans by the Division of Northeast Imports on April 2, 2024; and
- Choice Canning Company Unit II (A division of Choice Trading Corporation Pvt Ltd) (India), a company that currently operates under a four-star Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification for its processing plant (P10214), with additional BAP certifications for multiple shrimp farms, and that is not currently listed on Import Alert 16-124 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Aquaculture Seafood Products Due to Unapproved Drugs”), Import Alert 16-127 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Crustaceans Due to Chloramphenicol”), or Import Alert 16-129 (“Detention Without Physical Examination of Seafood Products Due to Nitrofurans”), had three entry lines refused for shrimp contaminated with veterinary drug residues by the Division of West Coast Imports on April 4, 2024.
The addition of the Indian shrimp processing plant Kader Exports Private Limited, Unit 5 to Import Alert 16-129 comes after another Indian shrimp processing plant associated with Kader Exports, Kader Exports Private Limited, Unit 04 had previously been added to both Import Alerts 16-124 and 16-129.
Nevertheless, of the shrimp entry line refusals reported by the FDA in April, those for Choice Canning Company Unit II (A division of Choice Trading Corporation Pvt Ltd) are the most remarkable. In March, The Outlaw Ocean Project published documented allegations of a whistleblower, Joshua Farinella, regarding labor abuse in the shrimp processing plants operated by the Indian shrimp company Choice Canning as well as the company’s knowing export of antibiotic-contaminated shrimp to the U.S. market.
In response, Choice Canning company executives denied these allegations in interviews, including one conducted by SeafoodSource with the vice president of sales and procurement at Choice Canning in March. In that interview, Jacob Jose claimed that the company was “squeaky clean” as evidenced by the lack of any FDA action taken against shrimp shipped by the Choice Group to the United States. SeafoodSource’s question to Mr. Jose and his full response is excerpted below:
SeafoodSource: Is the Choice Group knowingly selling any antibiotic-tainted shrimp into the U.S. market?
Jose: The answer is absolutely not. If you looked up our company’s name and we had 15 [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] rejections for antibiotics, I would say we had a problem. But, we don’t have any. You might get lucky once or twice, but you don’t get lucky for six or seven years. We had 21 loads handled by the FDA in the past year, and everything passed. We have a rigorous testing procedure in place to test for antibiotics and locate any issue, and we have an agreement where if there is any problem, the supplier will take the shrimp back. It’s unbelievable they can make these wild claims. We are squeaky clean; we follow everything by the books.
Data released to the Southern Shrimp Alliance by the FDA in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request indicates that through the end of fiscal year 2023, the agency had sampled just 21 shipments of shrimp from Choice Canning since fiscal year 2002. Thus, over a span of more than two decades, the FDA had, on average, subjected less than one shipment from the company to the United States each year to testing for banned antibiotics. In sum, the example of Choice Canning once again highlights the difficulty faced by the FDA in preventing antibiotic-contaminated imported seafood from reaching U.S. consumers at the extremely low levels of testing currently conducted by the agency.