, FL. Workers at My Way Seafood Inc were washing equipment and utensils with no sanitizer in the warewash sink when a state inspector arrived on September 3, a lapse the facility had been cited for before.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services inspector noted: "Warewash area: No sanitizer for warewash sink." Chlorine bleach was retrieved during the inspection, making this the one violation corrected on the spot. But it was not the first time inspectors had flagged the same problem.
What Inspectors Found
The inspection turned up five violations in total. Four remained unresolved when the inspector left.
The person in charge could not correctly answer questions about employee illness policies, according to the inspector's notes. The inspector wrote that the employee "did not correctly answer all questions regarding employee illness," with additional detail referred to the comments section of the inspection report.
The market also had no written procedures for responding to a vomit or diarrheal event on the premises. That gap, combined with the illness-knowledge failure, means two of the facility's basic outbreak-response systems were not in place at the time of inspection.
Shellstock records were also incomplete. State rules require that the date when the last piece of shellstock from a container is sold or served be written on the tag or label. The inspector found those dates were not being recorded.
No certified food protection manager certificate was posted or available at the market.
What These Violations Mean
The warewash sanitizer failure is the kind of violation that sounds procedural but carries real consequences. Equipment and utensils run through a sink with no sanitizer are not actually sanitized, even if they look clean. At a seafood market, that means cutting boards, knives, and containers used to handle raw shellfish and fish may carry bacteria from one use to the next. The fact that this violation was marked repeat means the market had already been told to fix it.
The shellstock tag requirement exists specifically to protect customers. When someone gets sick from oysters, clams, or mussels, investigators trace the illness back through the supply chain using those tags and the dates recorded on them. Without accurate dates showing when the last shellstock from a container was sold, that traceability breaks down. At My Way Seafood Inc, the inspector found those dates were simply not being written down.
The failure on employee illness questions is a direct public health gap. If the person running the floor does not know when a sick employee must be excluded from food handling, there is no reliable barrier between an ill worker and the seafood being sold to customers. This is not a paperwork problem. It is a knowledge gap in the person who is supposed to be making those calls in real time.
The absence of written vomit and diarrheal event procedures matters for similar reasons. A norovirus event in a food retail environment can spread rapidly if staff do not know exactly how to respond, what to clean, and what to close off. Written procedures are required precisely because a verbal policy is not enough when an incident happens.
The Longer Record
The data provided for this inspection does not include a prior inspection count for My Way Seafood Inc. What the record does show is that the warewash sanitizer violation was marked repeat, meaning state inspectors had documented the same failure at this facility in at least one previous visit.
A repeat violation in a seafood retail setting carries particular weight. Seafood markets operate under rules designed for an environment where the products being handled, raw shellfish and fresh fish, are among the highest-risk foods sold to the public. When the same sanitation failure reappears across inspections, it suggests the correction made after the first citation did not hold.
The September 3 inspection was recorded as having met sanitation inspection requirements overall, meaning the facility was not ordered closed. But four of the five violations cited that day, including the illness-knowledge gap, the missing shellstock dates, and the absent vomit-event procedures, left without being corrected on site.
What Remains Unresolved
The chlorine bleach retrieved during the inspection addressed the warewash sink problem for that visit. Whether it remained stocked after the inspector left is not something the inspection record can answer.
The four unresolved violations are a different matter. The person in charge still could not fully account for the market's employee illness policy when the inspection closed. The shellstock tags still lacked the required sale dates. The written vomit and diarrheal event procedures were still not in place. And no certified food protection manager certificate was on file.
For a retail seafood market, those are not minor administrative gaps. The shellstock date requirement alone connects directly to what happens if a customer becomes ill after a purchase from My Way Seafood Inc.
