A California seafood is paying $248,000 to resolve allegations it sold frozen seafood products with elevated levels of lead and cadmium without the required warnings.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office settled with Pacific American Fish Company Inc., a seafood distributor and processor based in Vernon, California, for a violation of Proposition 65 and California’s Unfair Competition Law.
Under the settlement, PAFCO must implement practices to minimize the introduction of lead and cadmium during processing, provide legally required warnings and pay $248,000 in penalties. The settlement also includes provisions that will enable other sellers of fresh or frozen seafood products to seek to join the settlement on similar terms.
Proposition 65 precludes any entity from knowingly exposing people to a chemical known to the state to cause cancer or reproductive toxicity without first providing a warning. Cadmium and lead are both toxic heavy metals that accumulate in the body over time and lead to health issues.
The settlement with PAFCO resulted from an investigation the Attorney General’s Office conducted after private enforcers issued multiple notices relating to several seafood products processed and distributed by PAFCO in California.
Testing on a number of seafood products processed and distributed by PAFCO in California confirmed that exposures to lead and cadmium from many of these products exceeded the safe-harbor levels set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment for reproductive harm.
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