GAO Study Links Duty Circumvention with Evasion of Food Safety Laws

TARPON SPRINGS, Fla., March 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A report released
this week by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) includes a formal
acknowledgement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other
enforcement agencies that companies willing to illegally mislabel shrimp
products to avoid paying antidumping duties are also evading U.S. food safety
efforts. The Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA), which repeatedly has voiced
concern over the unaddressed problem of illegal shrimp imports and its impact
on food safety, welcomed the study.

"Unethical companies are not just avoiding payment of hundreds of millions of
dollars owed on unfairly traded shrimp when they mislabel or transship
products. They are also directly undermining the food safety protections
intended to prevent unsafe shrimp from being sold to U.S. consumers," explains
John Williams, executive director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. "A solid
food safety program requires U.S. government agencies to cooperate and close
the door on all illegal schemes that disguise the origins of America's
favorite seafood. This GAO report is a good first step in that direction."

Since June 2007, Chinese shrimp have been subject to a food safety "Import
Alert" issued by FDA and antidumping orders issued by the U.S. Department of
Commerce. However, by transshipping or improperly labeling products, Chinese
shrimp have been able to enter the United States despite the Alert while
companies are simultaneously avoiding payment of antidumping duties. In
September 2007, multiple shipments of suspected Chinese shrimp illegally
transshipped through Malaysia tested positive for the presence of illegal,
cancer-causing drugs, according to the GAO.

The report states, "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 U.S. cannot win the battle on food safety without addressing economic
fraud such as mislabeling and transshipment," states Williams. "These schemes
are only possible because our laws permit anyone to export shrimp products to
the United States and anyone to import shrimp into our country. There is no
reason why U.S. laws regulating the importation of shrimp should be
significantly different from those governing imports of meat, poultry, and
eggs."

FDA is working with Customs and Border Protection and the Department of
Homeland Security 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.

SSA is an alliance of the U.S. warmwater wild shrimp fishery from eight
states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama,
Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. For more information on the SSA, please
visit www.shrimpalliance.com.

Editors Note:

A copy of the GAO report can be found at:
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d09258.pdf

SOURCE Southern Shrimp Alliance

Deborah Long, for Southern Shrimp Alliance, +1-785-539-5218