THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE _ If you dine on raw oysters, you're trusting your health to people like Apalachicola seafood dealer Sammy Crum, oysterman Jonathan Pace and the state of Florida.
Crum says he bears no responsibility for the four people who died over six weeks after eating oysters he sold, and he has no sympathy for anyone who dies after eating a raw oyster.
Pace left two 60-pound sacks of oysters on his boat overnight, violating Florida laws requiring quick cooling of oysters harvested to be eaten raw. Regulators found them in Crum's cooler, marked as safe to ship to the local raw bar.
When it comes to oysters and food safety, a porous system of oversight causes uncertainties about what's on your plate, where it came from, and who will be accountable if something goes wrong, a Sun Sentinel investigation found.
To many in Florida's old-school oyster industry, there is no question who is to blame when someone gets sick: the consumer.
At Apalachicola Bay Seafood, a family-operated business where oysters are washed, weighed and packed outside on a covered deck, Crum said it's not his fault that four people died after eating oysters from his company in summer 2011.
Crum said he sold those oysters to other dealers. "What they do with them once they get them from me, I have no idea."
And those who get sick from eating oysters, he said, don't heed the warnings and "shouldn't be eating them to start with. ... If they go ahead and do it, I have no sympathy for them."
Since 2010, state regulators have repeatedly cited Crum's company for violations, sending 15 warning letters. They've issued just one fine: for $100.
