Vietnamese seafood exporter Ba Hai Company Ltd. will resume shipping frozen tuna to the United States after correcting food safety violations.
Tuy Hoa City, Vietnam-based Ba Hai exports between 120,000 pounds and 150,000 pounds of frozen tuna monthly to the United States, mostly for use in restaurants.
In late March, the United States Food and Drug Administration warned Ba Hai about “serious deviations” from food safety requirements at the facility of its U.S. importer.
After the FDA’s inspection of Crystal Cove Seafood Corporation in Floral Park, New York, FDA said the importer’s HACCP plan for scombroid species of fish contained “serious deviations” from seafood HACCP requirements and that its frozen fish were adulterated.
The FDA ordered Ba Hai to keep its product out of commerce “until the cause of the deviation is corrected at the receiving, preserve…and pre-chilled critical control points to control scombrotoxin formation,” the organization said in its warning letter.
Ba Hai has corrected the problems found by the FDA and will resume shipping frozen tuna to U.S. by the end of this month, Sean Bui, deputy manger of sales and marketing for Ba Hai, told SeafoodSource.
“We had stopped shipping tuna since we got notice until now,” Bui said. The tuna are in process.”
The corrective actions taken by Ba Hai have been ruled sufficient, according to a recent letter sent to Ba Hai by the FDA
“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has completed an evaluation of your firm’s corrective actions in response to our warning letter,” it read. “Based on our evaluation, it appears that you have addressed the violations.”
