The FDA is advising restaurants and food retailers not to serve or sell and to dispose of, and consumers not to eat, certain oysters from Dailyfresh Shellfish Inc. The implicated oysters are from lot number 240531JM and were harvested from Subarea 23-10 in British Columbia, Canada, on May 30, according to a notice from the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration posted on June 12. The oysters may be contaminated with the toxins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP). These toxins cannot be removed by cooking or freezing.
On June 10 the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) advised the FDA that recent monitoring detected elevated levels of paralytic shellfish toxins in shellfish harvested from Subarea 23-10 in British Columbia, Canada. The CFIA advised the FDA that live oysters from Dailyfresh Shellfish, Inc., with Lot # 240531JM were harvested from Subarea 23-10 in BC, Canada on May 30 and had been shipped to distributors in California.
The product may have been distributed to other states as well. Molluscan shellfish contaminated with natural toxins from the water in which they lived can cause illness. Most of these toxins are produced by naturally occurring marine algae (phytoplankton).
Molluscan shellfish consume the algae which causes the toxins to accumulate in the shellfish’s flesh. Typically, contamination occurs following blooms of the toxic algal species; however, toxin contamination is possible even when algal concentrations are low in certain instances. One of.