The FDAImports.com team of FDA consultants and attorneys recently petitioned FDA to remove another client from FDA Import Alert, this time, Import Alert #99-08, “Detention without Physical Examination of Processed Foods for Pesticides,” which is the same alert that FDA added Brazilian orange juice processors to due to the presence of carbendazim.
In this case, a shipment of imported flavored peanuts from Mexico contained a residue of the pesticide pirimiphos-methyl, which is not permitted in peanuts. FDA placed the Mexican peanut processor on the Import Alert after this one shipment. This FDA Import Alert significantly disrupted the producer’s import operations for several weeks, including shipments of other peanut products not subject to the Import Alert.
After careful research it was clear the shipment in question was stored in a single overflow storage facility, which was not usually part of the supply-chain for U.S.-bound peanuts. Records indicated that during this storage time, pirimiphos-methyl was used at the facility for local, routine pest control. Essentially, the routine pest control and maintenance was not integrated with the processor’s export quality control procedures which were written to ensure no unapproved pesticides were used near products destined for the U.S. market. FDA began to stop all peanuts processed by the Mexican processor – even though only those peanuts stored at the one facility were affected. FDAImports.com was able to quickly limit the effect of the Import Alert to peanuts coming from that one facility rather than all of the other facilities the processor used. What started as a potentially major disaster affecting all of the company’s peanut supply was quickly mitigated to affecting only one overflow warehouse. Shortly thereafter, with the assistance of FDAImports.com, the company documented the problem, corrected it, and shipped several clean entries to prove the effectiveness of the corrections and FDAImports.com obtained removal of the company from the import alert.
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