Europol and Interpol have announced the seizure of 320 additional tonnes of "counterfeit and substandard food and beverages" following an operation that involved 83 countries, bringing the operation's seizure total to about 12,000 tonnes. "This year’s operational activities have found a new disturbing trend to address: the infiltration of low-quality products into the supply chain, a development possibly linked to the COVID-19 pandemic," the press release notes. The operation, which focused on dairy foods, olive oil, alcohol and horse meat, also identified counterfeit cereals, grains and derived products as well as coffee, tea and condiments.
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced that Michael Casey, vice president of Casey's Seafood Inc., has pleaded guilty to charges of falsely labeling almost 400,000 pounds of crab meat as derived from Atlantic blue crab in the United States despite importing the meat from a number of countries, including Indonesia, China, Thailand and Vietnam. Casey's guilty plea comes after a conviction for his father on similar charges. The foreign crab meat, which the company reportedly repacked into containers labeled "Product of USA," had a wholesale value of approximately $4,324,916. “U.S. consumers expect the origin of their seafood to be correctly identified. When sellers attempt to deceive the public about their product’s origins, they put the public’s health at risk by introducing seafood of unknown origin,” a DOJ investigator is quoted as saying in an agency press release. “When sellers are deceptive about their products’ origins, they deprive the…
