Richmond seafood firm gets stiff fine for importing tainted fish
The owner of a Richmond-based seafood company has been sentenced to probation and fined US$2,000 after pleading guilty to importing previously refused food to the U.S.
The firm agreed to pay a US$150,000 fine and was ordered Friday to do so within six months. Seven Seas will also be on probation for the next three years, with increased scrutiny and surveillance of its imports into the U.S.
The Seven Seas Fish Company,
and owner John Heras, 78, admitted in October in U.S. District Court in Seattle that between October 2014 and August 2015 they imported more than 4,000 kilograms of potentially adulterated fish into the country.
“This activity leads consumers to be concerned about food safety,” said Judge Mary Alice Theiler at a sentencing hearing Friday.
The fish had previously been refused entry after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that samples of frozen corvina, purchased from a seafood company in Mexico, were “too decomposed and putrid” to sell to consumers, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.
Corvina is a white fish similar to sea bass, often served in ceviche.
Prosecutors say Seven Seas arranged for the fish to enter the country anyhow, claiming it would not be sold there, but rather continue on to the company’s plant in Richmond for distribution in Canada. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Washington,
Seven Seas then broke this arrangement.
Once the fish arrived in B.C., prosecutors said, “Heras cooked and ate some of the fish and claimed he found nothing wrong with it.” He then encouraged others within his company to sell the fish in Washington state after all.
The FDA hasn’t found any illness linked to those who consumed the fish.
The company claims he no longer has a leadership role at Seven Seas.
Seven Seas, which also goes by 7 Seas, was founded in 1967 by Heras.