A flag arose somewhere in the FDA’s processing queue when the container reached a U.S. port, such as Newark, Los Angeles, or any of the dozens of entry sites where millions of pounds of shrimp from Southeast Asia are imported annually. A physical inspection of the shipment had been chosen. According to the lab results, there were traces of an antibiotic that is prohibited in food in the United States. There was an official rejection.
The FDA’s OASIS system was used to notify the importer. After that, the container most likely spent a few weeks in a cold storage facility while the importer’s logistics staff determined its future destination. Not in a landfill. Not to a burner. to a foreign nation or perhaps a different port in the United States, where the likelihood of a physical inspection is significantly reduced. This is not a hypothetical situation. It’s standard operating procedure.
When seafood fails an FDA import inspection and receives a formal refusal notice, the importer is given a 90-day window to decide what to do with the product. According to current FDA laws, there are three options: export the product from U.S. commerce, destroy it, or file an appeal with supporting paperwork. The first choice is the most popular by far. The product only needs to depart U.S. jurisdiction in order to be re-exported; no specific destination is needed. It may be sent to a different nation with laxer regulations regarding food safety.
It can be diverted to a different U.S. port under a new entry attempt in what the industry refers to as “port shopping,” taking advantage of the statistical fact that only a small percentage of imported seafood shipments undergo physical inspection. This procedure does not address the contamination that led to the refusal, such as the virus, the prohibited antibiotic, or the filth infraction. The fish moves on and becomes a nuisance for someone else.
The economics of the destruction option are designed to discourage its usage, and it is available but not required. When an importer decides to destroy a rejected shipment, all expenses are borne by the importer, including storage, transportation to a destruction facility, actual destruction, and FDA and CBP inspection verification. These expenses can be high for a large container of shrimp. Every refusal choice is motivated by the real financial motivation to find a market for the product somewhere, anyplace, rather than bear the cost of disposal. In any case, some importers might make the right decision. The economics are more likely to consistently choose re-export in most situations.
The Destruction of Hazardous Imports Act is the name of the legislative attempt to change this, and it has a history of being proposed, debated, and never passed. The plan would eliminate the ability for shipments determined to contain certain dangers to be reexported and grant the FDA obligatory destruction authority over rejected imports.
Industry objection to it typically centers on due process and the possibility of wrongful destruction before an appeal is decided. These are valid concerns, but they are probably not the main ones. The main reason is that importers find obligatory destruction to be significantly more costly than re-export, and the flexibility of the current system benefits them at the expense of food safety in the nation that receives the rejected product.
This system has a feature that is difficult to characterize as anything other than an externalization of cost: the product is rejected by the United States, the risk shifts to other countries, and the contamination spreads throughout the world’s seafood supply in a manner that is impossible for any one nation’s inspection system to completely contain.
The FDA makes its import rejection database available to the public via OASIS, so anyone who is interested may see precisely which shipments were rejected, why, and from which source. As you watch that list grow over time, you get the impression that while the transparency is real, the responsibility it suggests is not. The information is available. The tainted shrimp continues to move.
