6 days ago
FDA places import ban on Quality Seafood that Coast business says has no effect
The Food and Drug Administration has issued an order that bans Quality Poultry and Seafood from importing seafood, or any other food, for five years after the Biloxi business pleaded guilty last summer to mislabeling foreign fish.
The order, which took effect last week, is the latest consequence of an explosive fraud case involving Quality and Mary Mahoney's Old French House restaurant. But an attorney for Quality said this week that the order has no effect because the business only buys imports from U.S. wholesalers who have already brought seafood into the country.
'It doesn't impact what Quality does,' said attorney Wayne Hengen. 'They're not importers. They don't import. They never have imported.'
The FDA's order does not stop Quality from selling products that another person or business has already brought into the country. Quality, the largest seafood wholesaler on the Mississippi Coast, is one of only three businesses that the FDA lists as having been prohibited from importing food.
The order came several months after Quality was sentenced to five years probation and ordered to forfeit $1 million and pay a $500,000 fine for marketing cheap frozen imports as fresh local catch in a conspiracy with Mary Mahoney's.
Two Quality employees implicated in the case also pleaded guilty last year to misdemeanor charges of misbranding seafood. Sales manager Todd Rosetti was sentenced to eight months in prison. Business manager James Gunkel was sentenced to one year of home detention.
In a February letter, the FDA warned Quality it could face a five-year ban — the maximum allowed under federal law. Catherine Beer, director of the field enforcement division of the FDA's office of inspections and investigations, wrote that Quality's conduct misled consumers and 'seriously undermined' the regulation of imports.
She also said Rosetti and Gunkel were 'directly involved' in the scheme and made false statements to federal investigators. Quality's owner, Clell Rosetti, apologized at a sentencing last year, and Gunkel's attorney has said his client cooperated with investigators. Clell Rosetti was not charged with a crime.
Considering all the factors, Beer wrote, led the FDA 'to determine that QPS' conduct warrants the imposition of a maximum five-year period of debarment.'
Over the years, more than two dozen individuals have faced the FDA's food import bans. But records show the FDA has issued such an order against only two other businesses. One was a Canadian company that pleaded guilty in 2015 to using a fictitious name on import documents and delivering adulterated cattle feed to a Vermont farmer. The other was a North Carolina company that pleaded guilty in 2019 to charges that it falsely put 'Product of USA' labels on millions of dollars worth of foreign crab meat.
On Monday, the longtime Division Street storefront was still selling both shrimp from the Gulf and salmon from overseas to a steady stream of customers.
Hengen also raised questions over some of the order's language. The order says the FDA decided to issue the ban in part because of Quality's conviction 'for conduct relating to the importation into the United States of an article of food.' 'That's just not accurate,' Hengen said. 'They weren't convicted of that. That shortcuts it and leaves the wholesaler out.'
If Quality did import, he added, 'it would be a pretty big impact and they'd have to find another way to make money. But they are not the importers of food from any other country.'
Anita Lee and Margaret Baker contributed reporting.
