USDA analysis of FDA import refusals

Here is a link to the summary page of a USDA ERS study on FDA's refused food imports.Look for coverage of this in The Packer, and the author of the study promises future studies that will take a closer look at Chinese food import refusals and fruit and vegetable refusals. What did the study (link here to full report) find?


The study revealed recurring food safety risks and other problems (e.g., inadequate labeling) in certain types of imported foods. The findings, however, do not indicate the actual level or distribution of food safety risk that imports may pose to American consumers because FDA’s process for selecting shipments for inspection or other administrative actions is not random. Instead, FDA relies on risk-based criteria to guide its actions, including data on products and manufacturers with a history of violating U.S. import regulations. In essence, import refusals highlight food safety problems that appear to recur in trade and where the FDA has focused its import alerts and monitoring efforts. The top imported food categories refused due to food safety and other violations under FDA law were:
1. Vegetables and vegetable products (accounting for 20.6 percent of total violations);
2. Fishery and seafood products (20.1 percent); and
3. Fruits and fruit products (11.7 percent).
An examination of violations in these three categories reveals that refusals for sanitary violations in seafood and fruit products, pesticide violations in vegetables, and unregistered processes for canned food products in all three categories were persistent over time (fi g. 1).

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Of the 70,369 violations reported from 1998 to 2004, 33 percent were for misbranding or the lack of appropriate labeling and 65 percent were for adulteration or safety and packaging integrity problems (e.g.,leaky containers/swollen cans maysuggest the presence of microbial growth). Adulteration violations pose a wide range of food safety risks, from less severe risks, such as an insect in cooked soup, to immediate risks to human health, like botulism in canned food. The data indicate that the most common adulteration violations were for the appearance of fi lth in a food product and for failure to fi le information or register a specifi ed process. When specifi c pathogens were identified in import refusals, they tended to be found in food products typically associated with such risks (e.g., Listeria in cheese and cheese products).