Ahi shipments found with hepatitis A

More shipments of foreign ahi contaminated with hepatitis A have been identified by a Hawaii seafood seller, and federal food safety and health officials are trying to alert consumers in three mainland states who could be affected by the virus.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday alerted the public and local health regulators in California, Texas and Oklahoma that potentially contaminated frozen yellowfin tuna steaks and cubes sold by Hilo Fish Co. to distributors may have been eaten by consumers in those states over the last two weeks.

The FDA announcement said Hilo Fish had a private lab test shipments of ahi and found samples of fish from two foreign suppliers — one in Vietnam and one in the Philippines — to be contaminated with hepatitis A.

Kerry Umamoto, president of Hilo Fish, said the company began voluntarily testing seafood after the outbreak of hepatitis A at Genki Sushi restaurants that sickened 291 people in Hawaii and was linked to raw scallops imported from the Philippines.

On May 1 a sister company of Hilo Fish, Tropic Fish Hawaii, reported that its voluntary testing confirmed hepatitis A in frozen ahi cubes it received from Indonesia and distributed to several Oahu supermarkets, two restaurants, a caterer and a convenience store.

Hilo Fish reported its test results to the FDA on May 16. “We’re doing the right thing,” Umamoto said, explaining that testing can identify contaminated food and help prevent people from getting sick but also can hurt the image of a company that tests, compared with companies that don’t test.

“We’re always striving to do the best for all our customers,” he said. “We continue to strive for the best.”

Umamoto said the company, which also employs two full-time quality control inspectors based in Asia, will need to study how it might better sample its imported seafood to catch problems before products are consumed.

At Tropic Fish, President Shawn Tanoue previously said that the company’s normal procedure is to test seafood and receive results before distributing the product, and that this procedure wasn’t followed for the particular contaminated shipment distributed on Oahu.

Tanoue apologized to customers and the public, and said procedures were corrected to ensure the same problem doesn’t happen again.

In that case the state Health Department said no one has been identified to date as being sickened by the contagious liver disease, which can have serious health consequences, because the alert was received in time for anyone who ate contaminated ahi to get a vaccination if they hadn’t already had one.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it is not aware of any illness linked to the ahi imported and sold by Hilo Fish. The agency advises that people who have eaten fish at the establishments within the last two weeks get a vaccine that can prevent the virus from harming someone who was exposed. After two weeks of exposure, such preventive treatment is not effective, the agency said.

The ahi recalled by Hilo Fish was from Sustainable Seafood Co. in Vietnam and Santa Cruz Seafood Inc. in the Philippines. The FDA identified 26 mainly restaurants and hotels in the three states that received fish from the shipments so the establishments and health agency officials can help consumers who are at risk of getting sick. The risk is greater if the ahi was not cooked. Names of the 26 establishments are posted online at fda.gov.

Umamoto said 188 cases of cubed ahi and 44 cases of ahi steaks, which the company had in a cold-storage facility in California, were sold and delivered to the establishments by distributors. Some of the recalled fish was also distributed in New York but was not sold to the public, according to the FDA.

Hilo Fish and Tropic Fish are both subsidiaries of CMU & Associates, which is led by Charles Umamoto and describes itself as the largest distributor of fresh and frozen seafood in Hawaii.