Sullivan Harbor Farm, the Hancock seafood company that was shut down over health and food safety concerns by the Food and Drug Administration, plans to reopen soon under a new owner.
Leslie Harlow, a spokeswoman for the company, said the company has already fulfilled many of the requirements in a consent decree with the federal Food and Drug Administration, making repairs and preparing protocols for following food safety practices. Harlow declined to be more specific about when the company will reopen, but said the main step still to be completed is a validation study, in which a food safety expert watches over production to make sure that health and safety standards are followed.
Harlow also declined to identify the new owner, although she said it is someone local with experience in the seafood industry. She said the name of the new owner will be announced publicly in about 10 days.
Sullivan Harbor Farm and its former owner, Ira Joel Frantzman, were known for smoked fish products, such as salmon, trout and char. The smoked fish had received awards in the industry and past customers have included Legal Sea Foods and Dean & DeLuca, a gourmet food shop based in New York.
Locally, its goods were sold by Harbor Fish Market, and one of the owners said the shop on Custom House Wharf will return as a customer when production resumes.
“Our attitude is, if the FDA says they’re OK, we’re fine with it,” said Nick Alfiero.
Harbor Fish never found problems with the products it bought from Sullivan Harbor Farm, Alfiero said, and never received any complaints from customers.
“We bought their products because, first off, they’re a Maine company, and secondly, their product was good,” he said.
The FDA said concerns over food handling date back more than a decade and Sullivan Harbor Farm was told repeatedly in inspection reports, letters and meetings that its procedures were not satisfactory. The agency said Sullivan Harbor Farm’s food was prepared, packed or held in conditions that were unsanitary. In some cases, the FDA said, those conditions could lead to the growth of bacteria that can cause botulism or listeriosis, both of which can be fatal.
In March and April of 2015, the FDA conducted an inspection of the Sullivan Harbor Farm facility and found 10 violations of food health and safety rules, including a failure to make sure that no pests were getting into the plant. FDA investigators “observed rodent excreta pellets too numerous to count” in one of part of the plant, the FDA said in its motion for an injunction filed in U.S. District Court last Wednesday. On Friday, the FDA and Sullivan Harbor agreed to a consent decree, outlining the steps to be taken before it could reopen, but Harlow said the company has been working on correcting the problems for months.
The FDA alleges that the company failed to take steps on problems that were found as far back as 2004 until the agency moved to shut down Sullivan Harbor Farm.
SYSTEMIC, PERSISTENT VIOLATIONS
Sullivan Harbor Farms officials “repeatedly have promised to comply with applicable statutory and regulatory requirements” the FDA said in seeking the injunction last week, but the violations “remain systemic and persistent … (and officials) continue to fail to bring their operations into compliance with the law.”
Harlow said the company stopped producing seafood in November and has since been making improvements to the plant and establishing food safety standards dictated by the FDA.
She said the company had sales of “less than $1 million a year” and a following from both high-end chefs and consumers, who could buy the seafood online. She said the company has pre-orders from consumers for when it resumes production and wholesale customers are also asking when the company will be shipping again.
Harlow said the infractions “are all easy-to-remedy things.” She said the company had to hire a lawyer and food safety experts to deal with the problems. Three of the company’s former workers are currently working at the facility, she said, and the other three will be rehired as soon as production resumes.
Harlow, who has worked for the company on-and-off for 25 years, said she’s confident that the company can successfully restart under the new ownership and with the changes that have been made.
“We are an extremely strong Maine brand,” she said.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s consumer protection branch who is handling the Sullivan Harbor Farm case did not respond to emailed questions Tuesday.
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