Fish Warning Issued for Three States

The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has issued a warning to the public concerning fish products that were illegally imported from China into three U.S. states without being certified for consumption.

In an announcement on Thursday, the federal agency said that 12-ounce packs of frozen striped pangasius maws were found to have been shipped to retail and wholesale sites in New York, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.

A pangasius is a type of catfish found in freshwater bodies in south and southeast Asia. A maw is an internal bladder that a fish can fill with air to regulate its buoyancy; the organ is used in Chinese cooking as it is considered to be rich in protein and nutrients.

The FSIS said that, as the product had not been presented to it for import inspection—as required by law—it was “unfit for human consumption.”

Newsweek approached Fuxin U.S.A., the Westbury, New York-based import company mentioned in the FSIS announcement, via email for comment on Monday.

By law, any commercial imports of meat, poultry and egg products into America must be produced by certified establishments and inspected on arrival in the U.S. before entering the internal market. There are several Chinese raw fish product manufacturers that are certified by FSIS, but it is unclear if the products in question originated from one of them.

The FSIS said that the products were detected while officials were carrying out surveillance activities at a wholesaler. It said it was now working with other agencies to understand how the products entered the country.

Newsweek approached FSIS via email for further comment on Monday.

The packs do not bear any establishment or import marks, and were packed in plain white cartons. Images of the product show the trays of frozen fish product are vacuum sealed with a blue label that does not say who they were produced by within China, aside from the fish being “farm raised.”

The FSIS said that there had been no confirmed reports of adverse reactions to consumption of the products, but said that it was “concerned that some product may be in retailers’ and consumers’ freezers or refrigerators.”

It asked retailers holding the product not to sell them, and consumers who had bought them to dispose of them by double-bagging them to reduce the possibility of animals accessing the product in the trash.

In recent months, the federal agency has announced recalls of several meat products that were imported without adequate inspection from countries including Canada, Honduras and Colombia.

According to a February 2021 report by the U.S. International Trade Commission, around $2.4 billion of illegal, unreported and unregulated seafood was imported into America in 2019, of which China was the largest single source, estimated to be responsible for over $204 million.