FDA takes action against fish vendor

MINNEAPOLIS -- Coastal Seafoods, a fish vendor that supplies restaurants with seafood, is being sued by the Food and Drug Administration for failing to keep proper paperwork on its food-safety procedures.

The FDA lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court does not indicate that any of the store's food is unsafe. The company's general manager, Tim Lauer, said the dispute concerns paperwork, not inventory.

"Everything they have sampled has come back completely clear," Lauer said Tuesday. "There were no pathogens found."

Coastal Seafoods has locations in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Wayzata. The company gets its supply from Massachusetts, Hawaii and Washington.

In a statement, the FDA said it found incomplete records for the company's food-safety program, which should list all possible hazards and prevention measures for each kind of seafood.

The government inspected Coastal Seafood facilities eight times in the past six years. Violations were found on seven of those visits, the lawsuit says.

The latest visit ended Monday. Inspectors said the company did not have safety plans for vacuum- and nonvacuum-packaged smoked fish, raw yellow fin tuna, and live-and-shucked shellfish.

Lauer said the lawsuit was a surprise.

"We thought we had negotiated a settlement with this," he said. "We were disappointed and somewhat surprised that somebody didn't feel that way."

Coastal Seafoods was ordered to recall 15 orders of raw refrigerated escolar fillets this year because the fish contained high levels of histamine and was associated with illnesses, according to an FDA notice issued Oct. 11.

In August, the store also participated in a voluntary nationwide recall of raw oysters harvested from Washington after a rash of illnesses. The oysters were contaminated with vibrio parahaemolyticus, a bacterium found in saltwater.

The company hired a consultant to help create a food-safety plan. The consultant, Steve Otwell of the University of Florida, said Coastal Seafoods has an "exemplary" set of stores but needs better record-keeping.