THUNDER BAY -- A local restaurant is seeing its customers come back after the health unit seized hundreds of kilograms of meat and seafood from it earlier this month.
Late last month the Toronto Health Unit made the discovery that Toronto Seafood was shipping frozen seafood in non refrigerated trucks to various locations in Ontario.
Lee Sieswerda, manager of the environmental health department of the Thunder Bay and District Health Unit, said last week that the health unit was notified on Sept. 9 that the China House was the recipient of one of the shipments.
The following day a public health inspector went to the McIntyre Centre restaurant and questioned the owner, where he learned a shipment had indeed left Toronto on Sept. 5 and arrived in Thunder Bay on Sept. 6.
That shipment was seized the next afternoon.
China House spokesman Fei Zhou said the shipment came in frozen and that the restaurant had no reason to suspect that it wasn't good.
"I have never seen anybody deliver anything that wasn't frozen (to China House)," he said.
Still, the restaurant isn't taking any chances. It has stopped doing business with Toronto Seafood.
"We have a business to run. The stuff has to be good. We are responsible to our customers. Our customers are our friends to," Zhou said.
China House will work closely with the health unit into the future on regulations.
"Whatever they say, we'll comply," he said.
