A recently released report by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found 36 percent of frozen seafood products it tested were short-weighted.
The FDA said it conducted an assessment from 2022 to 2024 to collect and test a range of frozen raw and seafood products for the practice of short-weighting – or indicating a higher net weight of seafood on the package than is actually contained. Short-weighting typically involves seafood companies adding a thicker water glaze to products that results in a higher water weight than legally allowed.
According to the FDA, 10 of the 28 frozen seafood samples it collected were short-weighted. Short-weighting of 1 percent or more is considered a violation of the FDA’s compliance rule, and according to the report, the violations ranged from 2.3 percent up to 9.9 percent.
The agency said it collected 25 shrimp samples, two squid samples, and one tilapia sample through both targeted investigations based on complaints and “general surveillance.” The samples came from 12 different companies from four different countries – China, Ecuador, Indonesia, and Vietnam – and each sample contained 48 units of the frozen seafood product from the same production lot.
Five different companies violated short-weighting rules, with eight different shrimp samples and two squid samples being short-weighted, according to the FDA. Of the two samples collected from China, one squid sample from China was in violation of short-weighting rules; of 16 shrimp samples from Indonesia, eight were violating rules; and the one squid sample taken from Vietnam violated short-weighting rules. All nine shrimp samples from Ecuador were found to be in compliance.
The Indonesian samples were taken from five different companies. The companies were not named in the report, but the FDA’s report indicates one company's four samples all violated the short-weighting rules, another had all two samples violate the rules, and the last company had two out of five samples violate the rules.
“The results of this assignment show frozen seafood products continue to be a commodity susceptible to economically motivated adulteration,” the FDA report said. “The results reaffirm the need for the FDA to continue to test frozen (ice glazed) fishery products (e.g., shrimp, squid, fish fillets) for economically motivated adulteration to ensure consumers are not deceived.”
The FDA said that upon discovering the violations, all 10 were refused entry for shipment into the U.S., and all five companies are now under Import Alert 99-47. That alert identified two Indonesian companies for short-weighting shrimp, PT Bumi Pangan Utama and PT First Marine Seafoods; two Chinese companies for short-weighting squid, Yantai Ruihe Foods and Zhoushan City Shengtai Aquatic; one Vietnamese shrimp company, Ca Mau Seafood Processing and Service Joint Stock Corporation; and one Vietnamese squid company, Thanh Hao Seafood Co.
Southern Shrimp Alliance Executive Director John Williams said the results were not a surprise to the U.S. domestic shrimp industry.
“When you are forced to compete on price with foreign industries that routinely abuse banned antibiotics in their shrimp ponds and tolerate slave labor in their supply chains, selling water may be the only way to maintain a market presence,” Williams said. “Once again, the FDA’s sampling results demonstrate that the seafood importing industry will not regulate itself, and consumers will continue to be ripped off, until meaningful oversight of shrimp imports is implemented.”
Indonesia’s shrimp industry has already had to grapple with another major FDA-related alert, as shrimp imported from Indonesia-based PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati was the company involved in a recall advisory for shrimp that was possibly exposed to the radioactive isotope Caesium-137 (Cs-137). That story quickly swept across mainstream media, garnered attention from U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and was subject to a comment from U.S. Senator John Kennedy who claimed the shrimp could turn you into an alien.
In contrast to the increased scrutiny on Indonesia, Ecuador’s shrimp aquaculture industry celebrated the results of the FDA’s testing as confirmation of the industry’s integrity. Ecuador’s National Chamber of Aquaculture (CNA) said the test results highlight its commitment to regulatory compliance and “underscores the vital role of compliance with international requirements.”
“Accurate net weight labeling protects transparency in trade, reinforces consumer confidence, and helps prevent fraudulent practices such as economically motivated adulteration, where products are deliberately made to appear heavier or more substantial than they truly are,” the CNA said.
