Brooklyn seafood distributor recalls smoked salmon, halibut and trout over Listeria risk

A Brooklyn wholesale seafood distributor has recalled an entire lot of its cold-smoked salmon, halibut and trout after New York state inspectors flagged the product for possible contamination with Listeria monocytogenes, according to a notice posted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The recalled item, sold under the Starfish brand as an 8-ounce "Seafood Trio" of sliced fillets, was distributed to retailers in six states along the Eastern Seaboard.

The company behind the recall, Krasnyi Oktyabr Inc., says it is a wholesale distributor and did not manufacture the fish itself, which was produced in Latvia. No illnesses linked to the product had been reported as of the notice's publication on October 9, a point confirmed in separate coverage by a wire report carried by Yahoo News and by a station report from WSOC-TV's news service. The absence of confirmed illness does not lessen the seriousness of the hazard, public health officials say, because listeriosis can take weeks to surface and is frequently severe enough to require hospitalization by the time it is diagnosed.

The scope of the recall

The recalled product carries lot number D139149161-153 and an expiration date of December 1, 2027. It was sold in vacuum-sealed plastic packaging under the label "Starfish Seafood Cold Smoked Seafood Trio Salmon Halibut Trout Sliced Fillet." According to the FDA notice, the affected fish reached stores in New York, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina, a distribution footprint consistent with a wholesale supplier serving delicatessens, specialty grocers and smaller retail chains rather than a single national chain.

The contamination was not detected by the company's own testing but by a government laboratory. The New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets identified the potential presence of Listeria monocytogenes during routine sampling, after which Krasnyi Oktyabr initiated the recall and notified its retail customers to stop selling and distributing the product, check remaining inventory, and in turn alert their own customers. That sequence — state inspectors catching a pathogen that a company's internal controls missed — mirrors how a large share of ready-to-eat recalls begin in the United States, since most small and mid-sized processors and distributors rely at least partly on state and federal surveillance testing to catch the rare contaminated lot.

Why smoked fish keeps showing up on this list

Listeria monocytogenes is unusual among foodborne pathogens because it can grow slowly even under refrigeration, and cold-smoking — a curing process that flavors fish with smoke at low temperatures without fully cooking it — does not reliably kill the bacteria the way hot cooking does. Public health agencies have treated refrigerated smoked seafood as a recurring risk category for decades, grouping it with deli meats and soft cheeses as a food where a single contaminated production lot, rather than any mishandling by the consumer, is usually the cause of an outbreak. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that listeriosis sickens roughly 1,250 people and kills about 172 of them in the United States every year, making it the fourth-leading cause of death from foodborne illness nationally, even though confirmed cases are comparatively rare next to pathogens such as salmonella or norovirus.

That lethality gap — few total cases but a disproportionate share of deaths — is why health agencies treat even small-volume recalls like this one as significant. The bacterium's ability to cross the placenta and the blood-brain barrier means it disproportionately harms a narrow set of people rather than the general population, which is reflected in the standard warning language the FDA attaches to nearly every Listeria recall notice it publishes.

"Potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, which can cause serious, sometimes fatal infections in young children, frail or elderly people, and others with weakened immune systems. Although healthy individuals may suffer only short-term symptoms such as high fever, severe headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea, Listeria infection can cause miscarriages and stillbirths among pregnant women."

Who is most at risk

The population most exposed by this particular recall is not the general grocery-shopping public but a specific, identifiable set of consumers: pregnant women, adults 65 and older, infants, and anyone who is immunocompromised through illness, transplant medication, chemotherapy or chronic disease. Federal dietary guidance has long singled out refrigerated smoked seafood as a food this group should avoid altogether unless it has been cooked into a steaming-hot dish such as a casserole, a recommendation repeated in the CDC's consumer guidance on protecting a pregnancy from listeriosis. Lox, nova-style salmon, kippered fish and smoked trout of the kind sold in delis and appetizing counters all fall under that same caution, regardless of brand.

For the healthy, non-pregnant adult, the practical risk from a single contaminated lot is comparatively low, and the illness more often resembles a feverish stomach bug than the invasive, bloodstream infection that defines severe cases. But because Listeria's incubation period can stretch from a few days to as long as 70 days, public health officials caution that anyone who has eaten the recalled product and later develops a persistent high fever, stiffness, confusion or severe headache should tell a doctor about the exposure specifically, since routine testing does not automatically screen for the bacterium.

What happens next

Krasnyi Oktyabr has told retailers that received the lot to pull remaining stock and notify their own customers, and the FDA notice directs consumers who bought the Starfish Seafood Trio to discard it or return it to the place of purchase for a full refund rather than attempt to cook it into safety, since cold-smoked fish is typically eaten as is. The company has listed a customer phone line, (718) 858-6720, staffed on weekdays, for refund and product questions. As of publication, neither the FDA notice nor the state agency that flagged the contamination had reported any confirmed human illnesses tied to the lot, and no expansion of the recall to additional lots, products or states had been announced.

The case is likely to remain a minor one by the standards of past Listeria events in ready-to-eat seafood — this recall covers a single lot from a regional wholesaler, not a mass-market national brand — but it adds to a recurring pattern that food-safety researchers have tracked in cold-smoked and cured fish for years: contamination traced to a narrow slice of production, caught by state or federal testing rather than illness reports, and resolved through a voluntary withdrawal before any outbreak is confirmed. Consumers who are unsure whether they purchased the affected lot can check the packaging for the Starfish brand name and the lot code printed on the label, and anyone in a high-risk group who regularly buys deli smoked fish may want to ask their retailer whether a given product has been recalled before assuming it is safe.