The owner of Casey's Seafood in Newport News, Virginia, pleaded guilty to charges of falsely labeling crab meat.
According to federal prosecutors, cheap, "distressed" crab meat from Indonesia and Brazil was mixed with Chesapeake blue crab and labeled as a "Product of the USA," before being sold -- to the tune of 360,000 pounds and $4.3 million.
James R. Casey, 74, the president of Casey’s Seafood in Newport News, faces up to five years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to violating the Lacey Act. His sentencing will take place on January 9.
The crab meat's fraudulent labeling took place between 2010 and 2015 and affected meat sold throughout the DMV and beyond.
Casey admitted to directing his employees to "unpack foreign crab meat from their suppliers, combine it with domestic blue crab and other types of crab, then re-pack that meat into Casey’s Seafood containers which were labeled 'Product of USA," WTKR reported. Sometimes the company would purchase discounted foreign crab meat that was on the verge of expiration and then re-condition the meat before packaging it into their own containers for distribution.
As we all know, there's nothing quite like our region's affinity for fresh Chesapeake blue crab, so Casey's misdeed is like a knife to the heart for seafood lovers -- or a crack to the claw.
So why did he do it?
“There was a significant decline in blue crab harvests, making it increasingly more expensive to purchase live blue crab, and increasingly more difficult to make a profit from the labor-intensive process of picking blue crab,” prosecutors wrote in court documents. “As a result, Casey and the company could not and did not process sufficient quantities of blue crab to meet its customers’ demands.”
Somebody tipped off the authorities to the thought that something was up with Casey's crab meat products. DNA testing conducted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration proved that the meat contained species besides the local blue crab.
The scandal sheds light on what could be a widespread issue in the crabbing industry.
“The fraudulent labeling of Chesapeake Bay and Atlantic Ocean blue crab meat has a detrimental impact on an industry that plays an important role in the Virginia and Maryland economies,” Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), wrote to President Barack Obama in 2015.
As of early 2018, there are new rules in place regarding the importing and documenting of seafood caught in other countries, but those rules don't help this particular situation of mislabeling seafood products once they're here.
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