The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against a North Carolina seafood company, alleging the company sold foreign crab meat in containers labeled "Product of USA."
From 2012 through 2015, the DOJ alleges, the company was unable to satisfy customer demand for domestically harvested blue crab and instead purchased crab meat from South America and Asia and relabeled it as a domestic product of the United States, according to the lawsuit filed with the US District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
The value of the crab meat mislabeled and sold was around $4 million (€3.5 million), according to the filing.
Phillip Carawan is named as the owner and operator overseeing the company's operations during the time of alleged seafood mislabeling.
The filing states Carawan directed employees of the company to "repackage and falsely label approximately 200,536 pounds of imported crab meat as product of the United States."
