Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported that there were 129 total seafood entry line refusals in December, of which none were of shrimp for reasons related to banned antibiotics. With no such refusals reported for November, the FDA has now gone two months without detecting antibiotics in shrimp imports.
For the year, the FDA has refused a total of 61 entry lines of shrimp for reasons related to veterinary drug residues. While higher than the total number of entry line refusals made by the FDA in the prior two years, the total is substantially below the average annual number of refusals over the last seventeen years (93).
To end the year, the FDA reported refusing another two entry lines of shrimp because of the presence of salmonella: one from Sri Lanka (Taprobane Seafoods (Pvt.) Ltd.) by the Division of Northeast Imports and one from the Philippines (HJR International Corporation) by the Division of Northeast Imports.