Danny Kim, president of Oahu food wholesaler Koha Foods, said he’s in "limbo" about what to do with his 10,000 pounds of frozen oyster meat and oysters on the half-shell from the Republic of Korea, now that the country has been taken off the list of certified shellfish shippers to the United States.
"I’m waiting for clarification. … It’s just a waiting game," he said Wednesday. "It’s unfortunate that this happened."
State health officials advised consumers Wednesday to not eat fresh or frozen shellfish from Korea, including clams, oysters or mussels, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined many of the products made from them may be contaminated and unsafe for human consumption.
The state said it has received no recent reports of illness related to shellfish from Korea, and that it was issuing the advisory as a precaution.
The action has halted the shipment of fresh and frozen shellfish from Korea to the United States.
Last year, the United States imported close to 50 million pounds of seafood from South Korea, and oysters and squid were among the leading products, according to SeafoodSource.com.
However, most shellfish imported to Hawaii comes from the U.S., Kim said.
FDA spokesman George Strait said the agency regularly tests shellfish around the world and found significant deficiencies in the cultivation of shellfish in Korean waters, including ineffective management of land-based pollution sources and inadequate sanitary controls to prevent discharge of human fecal waste.
In 2011, the FDA issued a recall of a brand of frozen oysters from Korea after a norovirus outbreak in Washington state.
Three people became ill at a restaurant there, but no one was hospitalized.
The FDA said testing by Korea’s National Fisheries Research and Development Institute has periodically detected norovirus in shellfish-growing areas since 2008.
Hawaii Health Department spokeswoman Janice Okubo said the contamination issues involving shellfish in Korea have been a long-term problem.
State health officials said consumers who have purchased fresh or frozen clams, mussels or oysters imported from Korea should discard them or return them to the place of purchase.
Toshiaki Wada, the Honolulu manager of JFC International Inc., said his food import business doesn’t have much inventory of shellfish from Korea now, because that nation stopped sending shellfish about three months ago.
Kim said his stock of frozen oysters was purchased last October and his supplier in Korea harvests oysters farther offshore than the main testing areas, where the waters are clean and there has never been any problem with the oysters.
"We stand by our product," Kim said.
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KOKUA LINE: June Watanabe is on vacation. Her column returns on Tuesday.
