Situation

An importer had worked with a foreign processed-food manufacturer for three years. Six months earlier, that manufacturer had been placed on the Red List after Salmonella was found in a shipment to a different U.S. importer.

Problem

This importer had no idea. When the container arrived in LA, it was placed on automatic hold — a roughly $3,000 cost and a 5-day delay. Combined with storage fees and lost business, total losses reached roughly $8,000.

Timeline

• Mistake 1 — 'The supplier will tell me' (suppliers rarely disclose it — they don't want to lose the business)
• Mistake 2 — 'Nothing's gone wrong so far' (Import Alerts are updated continuously)
• Mistake 3 — missed a spelling variant of the company name (e.g., 'Co.,Ltd' vs. 'Co.Ltd'), so the search failed
• Mistake 4 — 'Surely I'd only get hit after multiple violations' (DWPE listing can happen after a single violation)

Losses