Seafood loving Australians can rest assured that they can now enjoy delicious oysters over the Christmas break without having to worry about gastro outbreaks caused by oysters farmed from Coffin Bay in South Australia.

The allaying of public concerns come after the South Australia Department of Health and Wellbeing (DHW) cleared oyster harvesters in Coffin Bay to recommence harvesting and sales which came as music to the ears of Angel Seafood (ASX: AS1), one of the biggest farmers in the bay.

Shutdowns first commenced in November when health officials were alerted to an increase in cases of Vibrio Parahaemolyticus in South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria. These cases were then linked to oysters harvested in Coffin Bay which led to an industry-wide recall on November 19. This DHW recall resulted in all oysters harvested or sold between 4 September 2021 until 16 November 2021 to be recalled. This included frozen produce.

With no negative test results recorded against Angel’s oysters or production facilities over the past few weeks, the seafood supplier has been cleared by SHW to recommence harvesting and sales.

The clearance comes just in time for Christmas which is a seasonal peak period for the seafood industry. Harvesting farms in Coffin Bay will gradually all come back online pending DHS clearance but Angel Seafood is confident they will be back to 100% operating capacity before the end of December.

Fortunately for Angel Seafood, the company fared reasonably well from the industry shutdown which resulted in the recalling of just 40,000 dozen stock (or 480,000 oysters). The Company described this as being in the “lower end of expectations” and considerably less than the 2.6 million oysters that were harvested and sold over the recall period.

The recall put a dampener on momentum being built by Angel Seafood which reported a monthly sales record in October 2021 when selling 1.4 million oysters which delivered a new monthly revenue record of $1.2 million.

Vibrio Parahaemolyticus is bacteria that occurs naturally in coastal marine water and estuary environments, which when ingested can cause gastrointestinal illness in some cases.