A public warning has been issued by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the Department of Agriculture regarding fish items that were unlawfully imported into three U.S. states from China without proper certification for consumption.
The federal agency declared in a statement on Thursday that it had discovered that 12-ounce frozen striped pangasius maw packs had been distributed to wholesale and retail locations in Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and New York.
As per the FSIS, the goods were found at a wholesaler when agents were conducting surveillance.
According to legislation, any commercial imports of meat, poultry, and egg products into the United States must come from approved facilities and undergo inspections upon arrival before being sold on the domestic market.
The products were packaged in simple white boxes and have no establishment or import markings on them. Pictures of the goods display vacuum-sealed trays of frozen fish with a blue label that simply states that the fish are “farm raised” without identifying the Chinese manufacturer.
The FSIS declared the product “unfit for human consumption”, although there had not been any verified complaints of adverse reactions. The agency requested that stores that were holding the product refrain from selling it, and that customers who had already purchased it double-bag it in order to lessen the chance that animals would find them in the garbage.
According to a February 2021 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, China was the primary source in 2019, contributing for around $204 million of the approximately $2.4 billion in illegal, unreported, and unregulated seafood imported into the United States.
