In March 2022, China Customs detected a total of 223 batches of unqualified food items that were not allowed to enter the country during port supervision. All of them have been returned or destroyed at the port according to law. Among them, imported frozen food reached 92 batches, with a total weight of about 792.5 tons.
Different from the previous months, the proportion of aquatic products has decreased significantly (calculated by weight): in February, aquatic products accounted for as high as 93% of all frozen foods not allowed to enter the country, while in March, the proportion of aquatic products dropped to 41%.
No matter how the proportion of aquatic products and meats that are not allowed to enter the country changes, there is a category of frozen products that is on the list every month, and that is frozen shrimp products.
In March, the number of frozen shrimp that were not allowed to enter the country reached 22 batches, with a total weight of nearly 186 tons. The white shrimp was the majority, accounting for more than 84% of the shrimp products. The remaining 16% was a batch of Argentine red shrimp, 1 batch of frozen lobster and 1 batch of black tiger shrimp. The rejected frozen shrimp products were from Vietnam (Vannamei shrimp, black tiger shrimp), India (Vannamei shrimp), Ecuador (Vannamei shrimp), Thailand (frozen lobster), Argentine (Argentine red shrimp).
Imported frozen vannamei shrimp products have always been unable to completely get rid of the problems of “excessive use of food additives phosphoric acid and phosphate”, “animal disease”, “detection of furazolidone metabolites”, etc. Compared with the problems of meat products such as the lack of basic documents that can be avoided and controlled at the transaction level, the quality problems of shrimp products cannot be controlled by importers because these problems occur at the source of breeding and at the processing in factories.
