diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 19fc575e0d..949e93ace3 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -603,6 +603,7 @@
 
 16. The options `datatable.print.class` and `datatable.print.keys` are now `TRUE` by default. They have been available since v1.9.8 (Nov 2016) and v1.11.0 (May 2018) respectively.
 
+17. A defunct code path in `fread` was removed. The code, which had been present for four years, was intended as an optimization for `na.strings = ""` but due to an error was never actually used. The error was uncovered by CRAN's continuous testing which uses a variety of environments to build and test R packages. One of these uses the latest version of the GCC compiler which newly warns on the type of error present here. Thanks to Václav Tlapák for investigating [#5733](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/5377) and the PR [#5399](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/pull/5399).
 
 # data.table [v1.14.2](https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/milestone/24?closed=1)  (27 Sep 2021)
 
diff --git a/src/fread.c b/src/fread.c
index 04df88d9c2..dde610e047 100644
--- a/src/fread.c
+++ b/src/fread.c
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ static inline const char *end_NA_string(const char *start) {
   // start should be at the beginning of any potential NA string, after leading whitespace skipped by caller
   const char* const* nastr = NAstrings;
   const char *mostConsumed = start; // tests 1550* includes both 'na' and 'nan' in nastrings. Don't stop after 'na' if 'nan' can be consumed too.
-  if (nastr) while (*nastr) {
+  while (*nastr) {
     const char *ch1 = start;
     const char *ch2 = *nastr;
     while (*ch1==*ch2 && *ch2!='\0') { ch1++; ch2++; }
@@ -1283,8 +1283,6 @@ int freadMain(freadMainArgs _args) {
   while (*nastr) {
     if (**nastr == '\0') {
       blank_is_a_NAstring = true;
-      // if blank is the only one, as is the default, clear NAstrings so that doesn't have to be checked
-      if (nastr==NAstrings && nastr+1==NULL) NAstrings=NULL;
       nastr++;
       continue;
     }