The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has started the first few weeks of 2023 by adding an Indian shrimp exporter and an Ecuadorian shrimp exporter to its import alert list for the use of nitrofurans.
The FDA added Indian shrimp exporter Suryamitra Exim and Ecuadorian shrimp exporter Propemar to Import Alert 16-129, “Detention Without Physical Examination of Seafood Products Due to Nitrofurans,” the FDA announced in a press release. The addition to the import alert authorizes port authorities to detain shipments from the two companies until it is demonstrated their products are free of drug residues.
The inclusion of a company from Ecuador is relatively new, according to a press release from the Southern Shrimp Alliance, as Propemar is the only company from Ecuador listed in the alert. The last time that the FDA refused the entry of shrimp exported from Ecuador due to drug residues was 2009. Since 2002, the FDA has a total of six entry refusals of Ecuadorian shrimp due to banned antibiotics.
Nitrofurans are approved in limited circumstances in the U.S. such as treatment of non-food producing animals.
The Fisheries Department of the West Bengal state in India announced a ban on 20 antibiotics and other pharmacologically active substances in shrimp aquaculture in 2022, a move that came after India’s main drug regulatory authority told states to more strictly control the sale of veterinary antibiotics in the aquaculture industry – especially in the shrimp-farming sector.
Ecuador, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the top shrimp-producing countries in the world in recent years, and Ecuador’s Vice Ministry of Aquaculture and Fisheries of the Ministry of Production, Foreign Trade, Investments, and Fisheries (MPCEIP) signed a confidentiality agreement with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the first step of a strategic alliance in August 2022. The goal was to achieve a closer regulatory relationship between the U.S. FDA and the Ecuador shrimp sector.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
