At Indian Point Marine Farms, ensuring the food safety of our mussels is our number one priority. Certain hazards do pertain to shellfish and we are quite familiar with the issues and believe that we go above and beyond the normal practices to ensure that our mussels are wholesome and safe to eat.

At Indian Point Marine Farms, we have been trained in the principles of HACCP (Hazard analysis at critical control points) and apply this widely accepted food safety procedure to all aspects of our operation. Several years ago, we were one of two shellfish producers (the other being an oyster producer on the West Coast) who were funded to develop a Farm HACCP program that starts with our purchase of spat and finishes when the market-sized mussels are delivered to our processing plant.

As our mussels come in our plant door, our Quality Management Program (QMP) comes into effect. QMP is required for all federally registered and inspected seafood plants and our QMP is audited by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. Our plant in Indian Point has been fully compliant since the program began. As a result, we are qualified to ship mussels within the province of Nova Scotia, outside of the province to the rest of Canada and also to the United States.

Our HACCP programmes ensure that food safety is considered, maintained and documented as required at every step from spat to delivery of final product to our customers.

Marine bio-toxins such as PSP, DSP and ASP are naturally occurring phytoplankton phenomena and occur throughout the world’s oceans. We, in Atlantic Canada, are not exempt. In order to maintain the integrity of our mussels, they are sampled every week by Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors and the results faxed to us promptly. Because we take this matter so seriously, we at Indian Point Marine Farms go above and beyond by taking weekly phytoplankton samples from the water column which are then analyzed by Mallet Research Limited for the presence of toxic phytoplankton in our waters.

Our mussels are grown on provincially granted aquaculture leases. These leases must conform to the standards set out under the Canadian Shellfish Sanitation Programme that is administered by Environment Canada. This guarantees that our mussels are grown in clean water. Indeed we are blessed in the Indian Point area with water that is clean, deep and cold.

At Indian Point, we take pride in our mussels and are glad to work as a team with provincial and federal inspectors to make sure our mussels are safe and delicious.