The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is calling on U.S. state governors to ban the sale of untreated Gulf Coast oysters since they may be contaminated with the Vibrio vulnificus bacterium.
For the past eight years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has used the Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) to monitor shellfish safety. The ISSC does not require processors to kill vibrio during summer months — from April to October — when risk is highest. According to CSPI, since the ISSC took over monitoring shellfish safety, more than 125 people have died from consuming contaminated oysters and another 125 have suffered serious illness.
In 2003, California banned the sale of untreated oysters harvested in the summer, and the number of vibrio-related deaths dropped from about six annually to zero in five years. Many retailers such as Legal Sea Foods and Costco only sell oysters that have been processed with cold pasteurization, hydrostatic pressure or other technology that kills the bacteria.
“The Gulf Coast oyster industry has privately acknowledged that it has the capacity to perform post-harvest processing on 100 percent of their oysters, but refuse to do so until demand for treated product is clear,” said Sarah Klien, CSPI staff attorney, in a letter to 49 U.S. governors and the mayor of the District of Columbia. “We urge you to require that only safe oysters be sold in your communities, an approach that will reduce medical costs and save lives.”
CSPI is Washington, D.C.-based consumer advocacy group.
