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For the second running month, FDA reports no shrimp entry line refusals for banned antibiotics. (Photo: stockfile/FIS)
No shrimp import rejected in July for banned antibiotics
UNITED STATES
Saturday, August 12, 2017, 02:30 (GMT + 9)
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rejected a total of 129 seafood entry lines for the month of July but clarified that none of them were of shrimp for reasons related to banned antibiotics, Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) reported.
The analysed period covers from Wednesday, June 28 to Thursday, July 27.
In June there were no refusals for shrimp for reasons related to banned antibiotics. In this way, it is the first time that the entity has gone two months without reporting such a refusal since April and May 2006.
In response to a Freedom of Information Act request made to the agency by the SSA, the FDA has reported the number of shrimp samples collected for testing for banned antibiotics and dyes on a fiscal year basis. This information reveals that the number of gathered shrimp samples each year has grown significantly since 2001.
The FDA additionally reported the number of tests conducted that resulted in detection of banned antibiotics or dyes. These data confirm that a small minority of total shrimp imports are found to contain banned antibiotics.
Nevertheless, the FDA’s detection rate in 2016 (4.2 per cent) is significantly higher than the detection rate reported by the agency in fiscal years 2003 through 2007.
The ASS highlights that, because the volume of shrimp imports into the United States is so high, if 4.2 per cent of all shrimp imports were contaminated in 2016, that would indicate that roughly 55.6 million pounds of shrimp entered the US with detectable quantities of banned antibiotics between October 2015 and September 2016.
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