Safe Harbor Certified Seafood

In order to provide the safest seafood attainable Royal Hawaiian goes beyond safe seafood handling and proactively tests its seafood for the highest risk factors in seafood safety. The Safe Harbor Certification is the most comprehensive seafood testing and screening program available today. The process represents a giant leap forward for the seafood industry and for seafood safety. As a third party testing agency, Safe Harbor Certification goes far beyond the government mandated HACCP process (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points – needed in every seafood processing and distribution facility) to ensure the seafood being processed and distributed is unequivocally safe to consume. While HACCP protocols are designed to identify, establish and monitor critical control points in the handling, processing and distribution process, the Safe Harbor Certification system is a series of proactive testing procedures that rigorously safeguard consumers through actual physical analysis of each seafood product. In addition, each Safe Harbor testing measure, be it for mercury, pathogens or histamine levels meet or exceed all FDA standards. Quite simply, Safe Harbor Certification is the highest assurance that the seafood bearing the Safe Harbor seal has been tested and certified to the strictest standards attainable.

Safe Harbor utilizes the most advanced proprietary technologies to conduct their daily seafood analyses. Independent technicians, working for Safe Harbor, operate in seafood processing/distribution facilities to proactively test seafood according to each of Safe Harbor’s Standard Operating Procedures’ (SOP). Because different products and species necessitate different tests, once certified to Safe Harbor’s extremely expedient, accurate, and stringent mercury standards, products that require PCR testing (for pathogens, such as E. Coli and Salmonella) go into a quarantine area within the facility for a short time to await certification. Other applicable products undergo histamine testing where quantitative results are attained in approximately 45 minutes. And brand new to the Safe Harbor platform, ALL fish originating from Japan and the surrounding waters, in addition to all HMS species (highly-migratory species) are screened for gamma-ray emitting radionuclides using a sodium iodide scintillation probe. When added together, all of these proactive testing measures make Safe Harbor Certification the most thorough, all-encompassing seafood safety system in the world.

Once the requisite tests have been completed and the applicable products certified, all test data is transferred and coded onto a 10-digit hexadecimal traceability tag that contains relevant information for the respective product, including species, catch origin, Julian date and the test data accumulated for that product. All certified product is then stickered with the Safe Harbor^® seal and a trace tag to ensure the end customer knows the product being received has been tested and certified to the strictest standards attainable.

Safe Harbor^® works closely with Royal Hawaiian to ensure that no compromise needs to be made to quality or spec. Enjoy seafood the way it was meant to be, sustainable, delicious and healthy!