A major seafood supplier has attacked the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department for naming it as the source of a suspected food poisoning outbreak when the test results for its oysters have so far returned a clean bill of health.
Of the 15 raw oyster samples obtained from the supplier, two of them were found satisfactory, while test results of the rest were pending, according to the department.
The Quarry Bay supplier - Worldwide Seafood - was ordered by the Centre for Food Safety on Wednesday not to distribute raw oysters when 33 people fell ill after eating at restaurants it supplied.
All the oysters were provided by Worldwide, whose customers include the Conrad Hotel, InterContinental Hong Kong and Novotel Century Hong Kong.
'Officers from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department told us on Wednesday afternoon that all our oyster samples were clean but then in the evening the media turned up at our company and asked us about the food poisoning outbreak, saying that we were named by the department as the source,' said Merlinda Ng Mer-ling, sales manager at Worldwide.
She said the incident had seriously affected the reputation of the company, which supplies about 7,000 oysters to major hotels across the city every day.
'We are still calculating the loss. Our business is severely affected. It is so unfair,' she said.
