U.S. Marshals, at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this week seized seafood products because a Wisconsin company did not have a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan in place.
The complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin was in regard to breaded seafood repacked by Fellerson, Inc., a firm that does business as K&S Wholesale Meats, for Soderholm Wholesale Foods, both of Sun Prairie.
According to the FDA news release, K&S Wholesale Meats allegedly repacked breaded seafood, including shrimp, haddock fillets, pollock fillets, and ocean perch fillets, under Soderholm’s “Seaside” label without having the required hazard reduction plan.
A HACCP, in the FDA’s description, is “a science-based system of preventive controls for food safety that commercial seafood processors develop to identify potential food safety hazards and steps to keep them from occurring.” The FDA said the government’s Seafood HACCP program was designed to “increase the margin of safety for U.S. consumers and to reduce those illnesses that do occur to the lowest possible levels.”
Not having a written plan is a violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, and seafood processed without one can be considered adulterated, under the law.
“K&S Wholesale Meats has repeatedly ignored FDA warnings to conduct a hazard analysis and implement a written HACCP plan, in order to prevent adulteration of their breaded seafood,” Dara Corrigan, the FDA’s associate commissioner for regulatory affairs, said in the statement. “By taking this action, the FDA is demonstrating its commitment to protecting the public health from the dangers of adulterated food products.”
FDA said it issued a warning letter to K&S Wholesale Meats on Jan. 13, 2010, for not having a HACCP plan in place for its breaded seafood products.
The company responded to the warning letter promising corrections, FDA said, but subsequent inspections in September 2010 and March 2011 revealed that the firm continued to repackage breaded fish without a written plan.
