The Food and Drug Administration is advising restaurants and food retailers in Texas and Louisiana to stop selling certain seafood products due to fears of listeria contamination.
Restaurants and retailers that have received shipments of seafood products from Topway Enterprises Inc. or Kazy’s Gourmet (another name for the products from the same facility) ready-to-eat seafood products – particularly salmon and tuna for raw consumption – should stop selling and discard the products, the FDA said in a release. According to the FDA, products distributed to the two states from 10 to 13 July are the ones at risk.
According to the FDA, a routine inspection of Topway Enterprises Inc. in February 2019 found “serious sanitation issues.” Of 53 environmental samples taken, 31 tested positive for non-disease-causing listeria species.
A follow up inspection of the facilities was performed in June by the Texas Department of State Health Services, which found positive tests for listeria monocytogenes, with state inspectors observing “continuing sanitation and seafood safety compliance issues, as Topway Enterprises Inc. had yet to completely implement the corrective actions the firm had agreed to in February 2019,” according to a release by the FDA.
On 3 July, the FDA and state partners notified the firm of the findings, and the company agreed to cease operations and recall products, in addition to providing the FDA with any corrective actions planned prior to resuming operations. However, Topway Enterprises instead resumed production on 10 July, without implementing “adequate corrective actions,” the FDA discovered.
As a result, the FDA is advising restaurants and retailers to discard any products created by Topway, and the organization published a safety alert to ensure customers are informed of the issues as the FDA “has been unable to confirm whether consignees of the recalled food were notified of the firm’s recall and were able to take action to remove existing product from the market.”
The FDA also recommends that any surfaces that could have come into contact with the products, whether in a restaurant or at home, be thoroughly cleaned to prevent listeria monocytogenes from propagating on surfaces.
