Authorities in Vietnam have seized 2,490 kilograms of expired whole salmon owned by Mowi Vietnam Company Limited, according to a statement from the Vietnam Directorate of Market Surveillance on 17 October.
The seizure was made during a raid on 14 October conducted by local market surveillance officials and police into a Mowi Vietnam factory in Amata Industrial Park in Dong Nai’s Bien Hoa Town.
Products seized included 52 “Atlantic Salmon” boxes of 30 kilograms each and 31 “Frozen Atlantic” boxes of 30 kilograms each. They were produced by “a foreign country” and all of them were expired, the directorate said. Some expired on 30 November, 2019, while the others hd an expiration date of 8 February, 2020.
Mowi Vietnam told the officials that the salmon was imported from a partner in Europe. The company planned to produce the fish into fillets and export the products.
“The documents that the company provided to the authorities show that the United States is the main destination for the company’s export products,” the Vietnamese agency said.
Photos of two boxes posted in the statement show that the producer of the Atlantic salmon seized in the case is Pesquera del Mar Antartico S.A from Puerto Montt, Chile.
Mowi said the expired products seized by the Vietnamese authorities in their cold-storage facility are not for sale, and that the company does not process products in Vietnam for export to the U.S. market.
“The salmon mentioned were products not intended for sale. They were already written off and were to be thrown away. The police believed that this was not well enough marked and chose to give us a fine,” a Mowispokesperson told SeafoodSource in an email on Monday, 19 October, adding that the company has accepted the fine.
Mowi Vietnam has operated its European-designed factory in Dong Nai for more than 15 years with an initial investment of USD 10 million (EUR 8.5 million), according to its website.
