New York Authorities Target Illegal Meats

December 5, 2006 — 

New York state regulators are stepping up enforcement on markets selling illegal meats and other foods mostly to immigrant customers.

In addition, inspectors from the state's Division of Food Safety are inspecting warehouses that receive imported products. In the first nine months of the year, inspectors across the state seized 1.6 million pounds of food, destroying about 81 percent of it. Last year, the state seized only 976,076 pounds of food. The state closed shops 66 times in 2005 and 72 times through September of this year.

Insuring compliance with the state's food safety regulations is particularly difficult in the city's ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Immigrant shopkeepers find a market for native food products and may import and sell food items from sources that have not been properly inspected.

[Ed. Importation and distribution of these products not only poses a threat to human health, it is also a potential route of introduction of exotic or foreign animal diseases into the U.S. Once here, pathogens can then spread into livestock or poultry populations resulting in potentially devastating disease outbreaks. The 2000 CSF and the 2001 FMD outbreaks in the UK were both blamed on exposure to illegally imported meat products.]

Source:
The Boston Globe