Norman, Okla.– October 22 – The Oklahoma Post
Reader Submission
By Casey “Red” Harmon, Norman, Oklahoma
Picture this: I’m all geared up to smoke some salmon. Good-old, flame-kissed, flaky red gold. My partner comes home proudly with a bag stamped OUR FAMILY Salmon Fillets. My brain whispers: “Ah, local brand. Mid-west. Straight from the briny depths of Alaska or maybe the Pacific Northwest.” Then I flip the bag. Wait for it. Product of China.
Yes, you read that right: “Our Family”, distributed from Grand Rapids via SpartanNash, leveraging wild-caught fish but processed overseas. My shock meter pinged. Twelve bucks a bag. Tiny fillets. Chinese processing. Really?
Now, I’m not here pulling wild conspiracy wires; just reading the fine print. The food import regime in the U.S. does allow fish caught abroad and processed abroad to enter our market labeled as from that processing country (China, in this case) even if the catch was elsewhere. And yes, the Food and Drug Administration has issued warning letters and import alerts against Chinese seafood processors for failing to meet U.S. inspection standards.
So here’s where the rubber meets the pan:
- You and I expect “Our Family” to mean local, trustworthy, made for people like us.
- What we see: overseas processing, import chain, opaque inspection.
- Our question: Who’s really inspecting this thing? And do we have any real assurance that the twelve-dollar bag is worth it, or even safe?
We’re in an era where trade wars, labor rights, food-safety loopholes are real dinner-plate problems. Reports show seafood processed in China has been linked to forced-labor and human-rights concerns. The fact that a brand bearing “Family” is potentially backing that kind of supply chain….. feels off.
Now this one here, the Aldi Atlantic Salmon Fillet, looks like the real deal—bright color, solid cut, and a price that doesn’t make your wallet cry. Nineteen bucks for over two pounds, fresh never frozen, product of Chile, processed in the U.S. That’s more like it. But even with that big BAP certification badge and “processed in the United States” tag, the question still lingers: who’s actually checking this stuff? Chile has one of the largest farmed salmon industries in the world; meaning antibiotics, feed additives, and ocean pens the size of football fields. The label says it’s inspected and certified, but unless you can name the inspector or trace the lot number back to a real facility, you’re taking it on faith. The fish might look cleaner, but the oversight still smells like bureaucracy marinated in seawater.
We decided to put the labels to the test. A few days later, we picked up a pack of American-caught Pacific salmon caught, processed, and packed right here in the States. We cooked it up side-by-side with the imported “Our Family” fillets and the Chilean salmon from Aldi. The difference was obvious before the first bite. The American salmon held its color and texture, firm and vibrant, with a clean ocean flavor that didn’t vanish in the smoker. The others? One shrank to half its size and bled water; the other tasted fine but felt farmed, uniform, too mild, too polite. When you line them up on the same plate, you don’t need a lab report to see where your money and your trust should go.
What started as a backyard experiment turned into a crash course in global economics. Standing over the smoker, it hit me that the difference on the plate wasn’t just flavor; it was policy. Every bite of that American-caught salmon told a story about accountability and proximity; every soggy imported fillet spoke to the chaos of a global supply chain stretched thin. Behind those labels are trade wars, tariffs, and bureaucratic breakdowns that decide what ends up in our grocery carts. And as we’ve just learned, October 2025 isn’t exactly a good month to trust that someone in Washington is minding the seafood counter.
Imported seafood faces a perfect storm in October 2025
A government shutdown and aggressive new tariffs have converged to create unprecedented vulnerabilities in seafood safety oversight, with routine FDA inspections completely halted while 94% of U.S. seafood arrives from abroad. The combination of 30% tariffs on Chinese seafood and a 22-day government shutdown has exposed critical gaps in food safety infrastructure at precisely the moment when supply chain disruptions and price pressures are pushing importers toward riskier sourcing decisions. With FDA inspecting less than 0.1% of imported seafood even before the shutdown, and chronic understaffing leaving 225 inspector positions vacant, the current crisis reveals how fragile America’s seafood safety net has become.
The stakes are substantial: Americans consume approximately 6.3 billion pounds of seafood annually, with imports accounting for 94% of consumption. China alone exported $1.52 billion worth of seafood to the U.S. in 2024, while Chile shipped $2.94 billion, primarily in salmon. These products now face unprecedented tariff barriers while simultaneously experiencing reduced safety oversight due to the federal funding lapse.
Current tariff landscape reshapes seafood economics
The Trump administration implemented sweeping tariff increases on imported seafood throughout 2025, creating a complex duty structure that varies dramatically by country. Chinese seafood currently faces a 30% effective tariff rate under a temporary 90-day agreement reached May 14, 2025, down from a brief peak of 104% in April. This rate applies on top of pre-existing 25% Section 301 tariffs imposed in 2018, though the U.S. Trade Representative has granted exclusions for specific products including tilapia, frozen haddock fillets, and flatfish sol; extended most recently through November 29, 2025.
Chilean seafood, America’s second-largest import source by value, faces a 10% baseline “reciprocal tariff” implemented April 5, 2025. While significantly lower than China’s rate, this tariff has devastated Chile’s salmon industry, which supplies 40-55% of the U.S. market. A study by San Sebastián University and SalmonChile estimates the tariff will reduce export value by $571 million and create a total economic impact of $1.4 billion including indirect effects. Chilean salmon fillet prices dropped to $5.86/lb in Q2 2025, down 4% from Q1, as producers absorbed costs through reduced margins rather than passing them to consumers.
The tariff structure creates competitive distortions across the global seafood market. Vietnam faces 46% tariffs, Thailand 36%, India 26%, and Norway 15%, while Canada remains exempt under USMCA provisions. Undercurrent News These differential rates are reshaping sourcing patterns as importers seek lower-cost alternatives, potentially shifting purchases toward countries with less robust food safety systems.
October government shutdown cripples routine food safety oversight
A 22-day government shutdown beginning October 1, 2025 has suspended all routine FDA food safety inspections, including seafood facility checks both domestic and foreign. The shutdown resulted from Congressional failure to pass FY 2026 appropriations, with disputes centered on extending expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies creating a political stalemate. With 86% of FDA staff retained but redirected to emergency-only operations, the agency’s Human Foods Program which lacks user fee funding operates at minimal capacity.
FDA Commissioner Marty Makary stated that “food safety efforts within FDA’s Human Foods Program would be reduced to safety surveillance and emergency responses,” with “longer-term food safety initiatives, including policy work to help prevent foodborne illnesses and diet-related diseases” completely halted. Only “for-cause” inspections tied to active outbreaks, recalls, or imminent health threats continue. Import screening at ports remains operational but with significant delays due to reduced staffing, creating bottlenecks for perishable goods.
The shutdown compounds existing capacity constraints. Even before October, FDA inspected only 0.1% of imported seafood shipments for contaminants and drug residues, processing approximately 17.7 million import lines annually with physical examination of roughly 1%. The agency has failed to meet its mandated inspection targets since 2018, conducting just 1,727 foreign facility inspections in FY 2019—representing only 9% of the 19,200 annual target required under the Food Safety Modernization Act.
CDC surveillance has also been severely curtailed, with 65% of staff furloughed and disease surveillance analysis suspended. Food safety experts warn this creates dangerous blind spots: “Authorities may be slower to solve a nationwide outbreak” without routine data analysis, according to Thomas Gremillion of the Consumer Federation of America. The combined effect is that contamination problems may fester undetected until they trigger consumer illness complaints.
FDA inspection resources were already critically misallocated before the shutdown. Of approximately 1,545 annual seafood inspections, 628 (40%) focus on domestic processors representing only 6% of consumed seafood, while foreign facilities producing 94% of supply receive far less attention. The agency employs just 432 investigators—90% of authorized levels—with 225 additional vacancies unfilled as of May 2024. Workforce challenges include high travel requirements (up to 50% of time), lower salaries compared to private sector positions, and declining morale following early 2025 lab closures in San Francisco and Chicago.
Foreign inspection costs average $38,700 per visit compared to $28,600 domestically, creating budget pressure to minimize overseas audits. FDA estimates it can conduct only 1,008 foreign inspections annually given resource constraints—a fraction of the 125,000+ registered foreign food facilities potentially subject to inspection. In 2016, FDA inspected just 144 foreign seafood processing plants, less than 2% of facilities shipping products to the U.S.
The shutdown eliminates even these limited checks. Brian Ronholm of Consumer Reports expressed concern about “morale and energy levels of food inspectors after earlier 2025 layoffs,” noting the shutdown “delays or prevents bringing back food inspectors who were cut earlier in 2025.” Unlike USDA’s meat and poultry inspection service, which continues operations during shutdowns due to statutory requirements, FDA has no mandate requiring continuous seafood inspection.
Verified concerns about Chinese seafood processing
All three specific claims about Chinese seafood safety issues are well-documented and true. FDA has issued numerous warning letters to Chinese seafood processors for HACCP violations and food safety failures. Recent examples include Chaohu Daxin Foodstuffs Co. Ltd. (February 2025) cited for inadequate Listeria monocytogenes controls in ready-to-eat crawfish, Rongcheng Jiayuan Food (November 2024) for canned tuna HACCP deviations, and Zhoushan Haichang Co. Ltd. (May 2022) for sulfite control failures in frozen crab.
FDA Import Alert 16-131 remains active and continuously updated, most recently in April 2024. This countrywide alert applies to all Chinese aquacultured seafood (catfish, basa, shrimp, dace, eel) except facilities on an approved “Green List.” The alert originated from 2006-2007 testing that found 25% of Chinese seafood samples contained illegal drug residues including malachite green, nitrofurans, gentian violet, and fluoroquinolones—substances that are carcinogenic or unsafe food additives with no approved use in U.S. aquaculture. In February 2025, eight Chinese clam exporters were added to import alerts for PFAS contamination.
Forced labor connections are extensively documented. The Congressional-Executive Commission on China held a hearing October 26, 2023 titled “From Bait to Plate—How Forced Labor in China Taints America’s Seafood Supply Chain,” concluding that “PRC-based companies that use the forced labor of Uyghurs and North Koreans process a large amount of seafood for the U.S. market.” CECCcecc The Department of Homeland Security added Shandong Meijia Group Co., Ltd. to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List in June 2024 for “participating in government-sponsored labor transfer programs” moving Uyghurs from Xinjiang to Shandong seafood processing facilities. DHS
Investigative reporting by The Outlaw Ocean Project identified at least 10 Chinese companies using more than 1,000 Uyghur workers since 2018, with products reaching Walmart, Kroger, Sysco, military bases, federal prisons, and public schools. The investigation documented “military-style dormitories under the watch of security personnel” with workers’ social media monitored and possession of religious materials risking detention. Over $200 million in U.S. government seafood purchases from 2018-2023 came from importers linked to Uyghur labor operations.
USDA country-of-origin labeling regulations explicitly allow processing country designation regardless of harvest location. As stated in official USDA policy: “when fish are caught in U.S. waters and then processed in a foreign country that foreign country of processing must appear on the package as the country of origin.” This means Alaskan-caught fish sent to China for filleting must be labeled “Product of China,” though retailers may also note harvest location. USDA An estimated 75% of China’s seafood imports are re-exported after processing, with $900 million of U.S.-caught seafood sent to China annually for processing before returning to American consumers.
Food safety oversight faces structural collapse
The current crisis exposes fundamental structural problems in FDA’s seafood inspection program that predate both tariffs and shutdown. FDA has not met its domestic and foreign inspection targets since FY 2018, according to a January 2025 Government Accountability Office report. The agency failed to inspect 49% of high-risk domestic facilities in FY 2021 and has never come close to the mandated 19,200 annual foreign facility inspections, reaching a peak of just 1,727 in FY 2019.
Budget uncertainty compounds staffing shortages. FDA’s FY 2025 budget request of $7.2 billion included $15 million for strengthening food safety capacity, but the agency has operated under continuing resolution at FY 2024 levels. Draft FY 2026 proposals suggest cutting FDA appropriations to $2.9 billion—a potential 17% reduction compared to FY 2023—while eliminating FDA’s “direct role” in routine food inspections and shifting responsibility to state programs. States currently conduct about one-third of routine surveillance inspections on FDA’s behalf but lack resources to absorb full responsibility.
Laboratory capacity suffered severe disruption in early 2025 when FDA abruptly closed food testing labs in San Francisco and Chicago, creating delays in seafood and produce testing. Though later reopened, the closures revealed fragility in FDA’s analytical infrastructure and damaged workforce morale. Labs also face shortages of basic supplies including plastic pipettes and testing reagents, making it difficult to maintain testing throughput even when samples arrive.
The agency lacks a formal performance management process focused on food safety inspection efforts, has no established procedures to minimize incomplete inspections, and has failed to develop alternative inspection targets despite GAO recommendations dating to 2015. FDA’s seafood program remains limited largely to HACCP enforcement through record reviews, not farm visits to evaluate drug use or laboratory quality, and does not test for drugs approved by EU or other countries for aquaculture despite their presence in imports.
Critical gaps in foreign supplier oversight
The Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP) under FSMA theoretically shifts responsibility to importers to verify their suppliers meet U.S. standards through risk-based activities. However, FSVP implementation remains incomplete, with limited inspections conducted to verify importer compliance. FDA inspection data from FY 2017-2019 shows minimal FSVP enforcement activity, and the pandemic-era backlog persists with over 340 plants in India and China uninspected for 5+ years as of May 2024.
FDA has not pursued equivalency agreements with foreign countries that would recognize their food safety systems as comparable to U.S. standards, unlike the European Union’s approach. Such agreements could leverage foreign government oversight rather than requiring direct FDA inspection of every facility, but the agency has shown little interest in this efficiency mechanism. FDA Import Alert 16-131 does acknowledge the processing country issue, stating that “if an aquacultured seafood product is sourced outside of China or Hong Kong SAR but processed in China…the processor in China…must demonstrate that adequate controls for unapproved drugs must be in place from aquaculture farming to final finished product processing.”
The combination of minimal physical inspection (0.1% of imports), limited FSVP enforcement, no equivalency agreements, and chronic foreign facility inspection shortfalls creates a system heavily dependent on importer integrity and document review. When FDA finds problems, the detection rate is alarming: nearly 10% of the seafood actually tested contains banned substances. This suggests the 99.9% of imports not tested likely harbor significant violations that escape detection.
Industry concentration exacerbates these risks. Major U.S. retailers and food service distributors (Walmart, Kroger, Albertsons, Sysco, Performance Food Group) source from the same Chinese processing facilities, meaning a contamination or forced labor issue at a single facility can affect products across 240+ name-brand stores and institutional suppliers. The Outlaw Ocean Project investigation documented exactly this pattern, tracing products from facilities using Uyghur labor to military bases, federal prisons, and school lunch programs.
Marine Mammal Protection Act adds new restrictions
Beyond tariffs and shutdown impacts, new Marine Mammal Protection Act import provisions take effect January 1, 2026, potentially blocking seafood from fisheries in 46 nations that fail to meet U.S. bycatch standards. Both China and Chile received only “partial comparability findings,” meaning some of their fisheries face import denial starting in 2026. NOAA Fisheries This adds another layer of complexity to an already disrupted supply chain, with importers needing to verify not just food safety compliance but also fishing method sustainability and marine mammal protection.
The NOAA Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) covers 13 species groups to combat illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, requiring enhanced documentation of harvest location and chain of custody. Combined with COOL labeling requirements, FSVP responsibilities, USDA tariff compliance, and marine mammal certifications, importers face a Byzantine regulatory framework that requires substantial expertise and documentation—precisely when government shutdown has halted FDA’s ability to provide guidance or process queries.
Food safety advocates and industry groups have proposed numerous solutions to strengthen seafood inspection, but political dysfunction has blocked implementation. The GAO’s January 2025 report made three specific recommendations: determine appropriate foreign investigator cadre size, implement procedures to minimize attempted inspections, and develop formal performance management processes. FDA concurred with all three but has taken no action during the political chaos of 2025.
Congress has held hearings highlighting the 0.1% inspection rate, with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform addressing imported seafood safety on April 10, 2025. The “Safer Shrimp Imports Act” was introduced to increase testing for contaminants, but has not advanced. Bipartisan letters from Representatives Panetta and Steel (December 2023) and Senators Britt and Scott (August 2025) urged investigation of forced labor and potential import bans, but no policy changes resulted.
The fundamental tension remains unresolved: Americans consume 6.3 billion pounds of seafood annually, 94% imported, from 125,000+ foreign facilities, while FDA has resources to physically inspect 0.1% of shipments and visit fewer than 2% of production facilities. Congress.gov Neither party has proposed funding increases sufficient to close this gap, while the draft FY 2026 budget instead suggests eliminating FDA’s direct inspection role entirely.
The October 2025 government shutdown has exposed the fragility of seafood safety oversight at precisely the moment when tariff-induced supply chain disruption creates maximum vulnerability. Routine FDA inspections of domestic and foreign seafood facilities have completely ceased, import screening faces significant delays, and CDC disease surveillance is suspended, creating dangerous blind spots in outbreak detection. Meanwhile, 30% tariffs on Chinese seafood and 10% tariffs on Chilean salmon are reshaping global sourcing patterns, potentially pushing importers toward cheaper suppliers in countries with weaker safety systems.
The crisis reveals that America’s seafood safety net was already failing before the shutdown. FDA’s chronic inability to meet inspection targets, workforce shortages of 225+ positions, inspection of just 0.1% of imports, and lack of performance management systems created systemic vulnerabilities that tariff pressures and political dysfunction have now amplified. Documented concerns about Chinese seafood processors receiving FDA warning letters for HACCP violations, forced labor operations using Uyghur and North Korean workers, and labeling regulations that obscure true origin are not theoretical—they represent ongoing realities that reduced oversight will only worsen.
With no immediate resolution to the shutdown expected and draft budgets proposing dramatic FDA funding cuts rather than increases, the structural problems will persist beyond the current crisis. The combination creates what food safety experts describe as a system “teetering on the brink of collapse,” where 94% of consumed seafood arrives from abroad with minimal safety verification, during a period of maximum supply chain disruption and minimal government oversight. Until Congress addresses the fundamental resource mismatch between inspection mandates and FDA capacity, American consumers remain exposed to preventable food safety risks from imported seafood.
So maybe this isn’t just about one mislabeled bag of fish. It’s about a nation so tangled in red tape and foreign trade deals that we can’t even tell where our dinner comes from. While Congress debates budgets and bureaucrats shuffle paper, families are the ones left holding the fork, trusting a system that inspects one in a thousand shipments and calls it safety. If America can put a man on the moon, it can surely trace a salmon fillet. Until we decide food safety is worth more than a soundbite, we’ll keep serving policy on the half shell and calling it dinner.
For twelve bucks, I want transparency. I want the “Family” in “Our Family” to include us—the consumer—not just the bottom line of the importing chain. Next time, I’m asking: Which facility in China? When was it last inspected? What part of the catch is wild-caught? What’s the portion size? Are we paying for value, or just paying for branding? In the end, the fish was fantastic, because we went local.
Writing By: Casey “Red” Harmon | Editing by Robbie Robertson
GOVERNMENT SOURCES
- GAO-25-107571: Food Safety: FDA Should Strengthen Inspection Efforts to Protect the U.S. Food Supply (January 2025)
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-25-107571 - GAO-11-286: Seafood Safety: FDA Needs to Improve Oversight of Imported Seafood and Better Leverage Limited Resources
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-11-286 - Import Alert 16-131: Detention Without Physical Examination of Aquacultured Seafood Products Due to Unapproved Drug Residues
https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_33.html - FY 2025 FDA Budget Summary
https://www.fda.gov/media/176923/download - FDA FY 2026 Lapse in Funding Information
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-fy-2026-lapse-funding-information - U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) — “Seafood Guidance Documents & Regulatory Information.” https://www.fda.gov/food
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) — Country of Origin Labeling and seafood inspection guidelines. https://www.usda.gov
- House Committee on Natural Resources (Rep. Jared Huffman) — “How the U.S. Violates Its Own Trade Laws to Buy Seafood from China.” https://huffman.house.gov
- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — Seafood Import Monitoring Program. https://www.noaa.gov
- DHS Adds PRC-Based Seafood, Aluminum, and Footwear Entities to Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Enforcement List (June 2024)
https://www.dhs.gov/archive/news/2024/06/11/dhs-adds-prc-based-seafood-aluminum-and-footwear-entities-uyghur-forced-labor - Seafood Import Monitoring Program
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/international/international-affairs/seafood-import-monitoring-program - Seafood Import Prohibitions under the Marine Mammal Protection Act
https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/foreign/marine-mammal-protection/seafood-import-prohibitions-under-marine-mammal-protection-act - Country of Origin Labeling (COOL) Brochure
https://www.ams.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media/COOLBrochureRetailer.pdf - A Tale of a Fish from Two Countries (USDA Blog, December 2016)
https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2016/12/05/tale-fish-two-countries - Congressional-Executive Commission on China: “From Bait to Plate—How Forced Labor in China Taints America’s Seafood Supply Chain” (October 2023)
https://www.cecc.gov/events/hearings/from-bait-to-plate-how-forced-labor-in-china-taints-the-american-seafood-industry - Congressional Research Service: U.S. Food and Agricultural Imports: Safeguards and Selected Issues
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46440
NEWS SOURCES
- Government shutdown poised to enter a third week as Congress remains at stalemate
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/government-shutdown-2025-latest-house-senate-trump/ - Senate votes fail again as government shutdown drags on
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/government-shutdown-latest-senate-votes-day-8/ - How safe is the food supply after federal cutbacks? Experts are worried
https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/05/29/nx-s1-5413449/food-safety-inspection-fda-usda - Investigation reveals Chinese seafood caught and processed using forced labor sold in U.S.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/investigation-reveals-chinese-seafood-caught-and-processed-using-forced-labor-sold-in-u-s - Chilean salmon, wine exports to United States fall due to tariffs
- https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/09/17/chile-chliean-salmon-wine/7231758131279/
- Yahoo News / Reuters
- “FDA Bars Chinese Seafood Companies Over Food Safety Concerns.” https://www.yahoo.com/news
- Trump increases duties on China to 104 percent as tariffs take effect
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/trump-increases-duties-on-china-to-104-percent-as-tariffs-take-effect - US, China agreement on tariffs encourages some, but others aren’t celebrating yet
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/us-china-agreement-on-tariffs-encourages-some-but-others-aren-t-celebrating-yet - USTR extends Section 301 tariff exclusions on certain seafood for another three months
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/ustr-extends-certain-section-301-tariff-exclusions-on-certain-seafood-for-another-three-months - Trump’s latest tariff order hits billions in US seafood imports from top source countries
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/trump-s-latest-tariff-order-hits-billions-in-us-seafood-imports-from-top-source-countries - US tariffs leave Chinese seafood exporters scrambling
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/us-tariffs-leave-chinese-seafood-exporters-scrambling - Senate approves spending bill allocating 26 percent more funding for FDA import inspections
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/senate-approves-spending-bill-allocating-26-percent-more-funding-for-fda-import-inspections - Bombshell Outlaw Ocean report finds evidence of seafood processed by forced labor in US supply chain
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/supply-trade/bombshell-outlaw-ocean-report-finds-evidence-of-seafood-processed-by-forced-labor-in-us-supply-chain - FDA embarks on new strategy for imported food inspections
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/food-safety-health/fda-embarks-on-new-strategy-for-imported-food-inspections - US extends Section 301 tariff exclusions on China to Nov. 29, including key seafood items
https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2025/09/01/us-extends-section-301-tariff-exclusions-on-china-to-nov-29-including-key-seafood-items/ - Trump tariff fallout catchup
https://www.undercurrentnews.com/2025/04/03/trump-tariff-fallout-catchup/ - FDA falls short on foreign shrimp inspections
https://www.nationalfisherman.com/fda-falls-short-on-foreign-shrimp-inspections - Chilean salmon regions ‘facing $1bn hit from Trump’s tariffs’
https://www.fishfarmingexpert.com/chilean-salmon-donald-trump-economic-impact/chilean-salmon-regions-facing-1bn-hit-from-trumps-tariffs/1931504 - How Will U.S. Tariffs Affect North American Seafood Trade?
https://www.aquaculturenorthamerica.com/how-will-u-s-tariffs-affect-north-american-seafood-trade/ - This Federal Food and Agriculture Work Will Cease During the Shutdown
https://civileats.com/2025/10/01/this-federal-food-and-agriculture-work-will-cease-during-the-shutdown/ - FDA Told to Improve Oversight of Imported Seafood
https://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/05/gao-report-asks-fda-to-boost-oversight-of-imported-seafood/ - FDA Has Not Met Food Inspection Targets Since 2018, GAO Report Finds
https://www.food-safety.com/articles/10048-fda-has-not-met-food-inspection-targets-since-2018-gao-report-finds - GAO to FDA: Inspect more domestic, foreign food facilities to ensure safe food supply
https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/foodborne-disease/gao-fda-inspect-more-domestic-foreign-food-facilities-ensure-safe-food-supply - GAO: FDA has not met inspection targets last 5 years
https://www.agri-pulse.com/articles/22150-gao-fda-has-not-met-food-inspection-targets-since-2018 - FDA budget cut proposal puts states in charge of routine food inspections
https://www.fooddive.com/news/fda-cuts-draft-hhs-budget/745865/ - FDA Isn’t Meeting Domestic, Foreign Food Facility Inspection Mandates: GAO
https://cheesereporter.com/news/2025/01/10/fda-isnt-meeting-domestic-foreign-food-facility-inspection-mandates-gao/ - Findings: China: The Superpower of Seafood
https://theoutlawocean.com/investigations/china-the-superpower-of-seafood/findings/ - How Uyghur Forced Labor Makes Seafood That Ends Up in School Lunches
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/how-uyghur-forced-labor-makes-seafood-ends-school-lunches
LEGAL & REGULATORY ANALYSIS
- FDA Foreign Inspections: Key developments and strategic shifts
https://www.whitecase.com/insight-alert/fda-foreign-inspections-key-developments-and-strategic-shifts - Impact of Government Shutdown on FDA and FSIS Activities
https://www.hoganlovells.com/en/publications/impact-of-government-shutdown-on-fda-and-fsis-activities - U.S. Government Shutdown 2025 (Week 1): Early Insights into FDA Operations
https://www.triagehealthlawblog.com/fda/u-s-government-shutdown-2025-week-1-early-insights-into-fda-operations/ - Impact of the Government Shutdown on FDA
https://www.venable.com/insights/publications/fda-pulse/impact-of-the-government-shutdown-on-fda-new - FDA, Imports, And USDA: What Today’s Federal Shutdown Means For You (Oct. 1, 2025)
https://fdaatty.com/fda-imports-and-usda-what-todays-federal-shutdown-means-for-you-oct-1-2025/
ADVOCACY & POLICY GROUPS
- As Food Imports Rise, FDA Drops Ball on Food Inspections Worldwide
https://prosperousamerica.org/as-food-imports-rise-fda-drops-ball-on-food-inspections-worldwide/ - USTR extends Section 301 tariff exclusions on certain seafood for another three months
https://www.savingseafood.org/news/economic-impact/ustr-extends-section-301-tariff-exclusions-on-certain-seafood-for-another-three-months/ - Congressional hearing reveals alarming inspection rates for imported seafood safety
https://citizenportal.ai/articles/2955880/Congressional-hearing-reveals-alarming-inspection-rates-for-imported-seafood-safety - FDA wants $7.2B for product safety, public health in Biden’s FY 2025 budget
https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2024/3/fda-wants-$7-2b-for-product-safety,-public-health
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