Carabinieri's NAS Seize Goods and Shut Down Fish Outlets Worth 15 Million Euros to Curb Hepatitis A

The Carabinieri Command for Health Protection (NAS), in agreement with the Ministero della Salute, carried out a national inspection campaign between March 26 and May 4, 2026 aimed at preventing the spread of Hepatitis A, focused on mollusk dispatch centers, purification centers, fishmongers, restaurants, neighborhood markets and vegetable retailers, especially in central-southern Italy. The operation covered 1,104 inspections, of which 416 (38% of the total) turned up irregularities. The final tally was the seizure of approximately 16 tons of food, with a commercial value exceeding 320,000 euros, financial penalties totaling 15 million euros, and the closure of 44 establishments for serious hygiene-sanitary shortcomings or lack of authorizations. The most frequent irregularities were dirty facilities and the absence of HACCP self-control plans, followed by traceability and labeling problems.

The choice of bivalve mollusks and fish as the focus of the campaign is no coincidence: the Hepatitis A virus is transmitted via the fecal-oral route, and filter-feeding mollusks — mussels, clams, oysters — concentrate the virus by filtering large volumes of potentially wastewater-contaminated water, making them one of the most efficient food vehicles for its transmission when the purification process is insufficient or the water source is not properly controlled. That 38% of inspections turned up irregularities, with failures concentrated in HACCP and traceability, suggests a systemic safety-management problem rather than isolated findings.

For TAAG, a campaign of this scale — focused on enteric viruses rather than the bacteria covered by conventional PCR kits — confirms that surveillance of the fishing industry needs to combine documentary traceability controls with microbiological monitoring of water and fecal indicators at purification centers, the point in the chain where it is actually decided whether a mollusk reaches the consumer's table clean or contaminated.