Stellar Bay Oyster Recall Expands Over Norovirus Risk

The Food and Drug Administration has expanded a national recall of raw oysters harvested by Stellar Bay Shellfish, and the expansion now covers every oyster the company harvested between December 22, 2025, and February 6, 2026. The oysters may be contaminated with norovirus, and they were bought by restaurants and food retailers in several states, including Colorado.

The harvest ground is specific. The oysters came from British Columbia, Canada, in area BC 17-20, under Canadian Land File number 1401656, and they reached the market under the Kusshi, Chrome Point, Stellar Bay and Stellar Bay Gold brand names. A buyer who doesn't recognize the harvester may still recognize one of those four names on a shellfish tag.

Norovirus is the reason a raw-oyster recall can't wait for a body count. It's the leading cause of vomiting and diarrhea from contaminated food in the United States, it spreads at very low doses, and raw oysters are eaten exactly as they come out of the water, with no cooking step to kill a virus the animal filtered out of its harvest bay.

The seven-week harvest window is what makes this expansion consequential. Oysters in a recall that spans late December to early February aren't a single day's shucked tub. They're multiple shipments, multiple distributors and menus in multiple states, and the tag on each lot is the only reliable way to know whether a given oyster sits inside the window.

Restaurants and retailers holding Stellar Bay product from those dates should pull it and follow the recall's disposal instructions rather than discounting it or moving it into cooked dishes on their own judgment. The recall notice, not a kitchen's improvisation, governs what happens to recalled shellfish.

Diners can't audit a harvest tag from a table, so the practical check runs the other way. Anyone who ate raw oysters recently and develops vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramping in the following one to two days should treat norovirus as a live possibility, stay hydrated, and keep in mind that the illness usually runs one to three days but spreads easily to everyone sharing a bathroom.

Mesa County Public Health published the expanded alert on November 14, 2026, as the FDA widened the recall, which is how a British Columbia harvest ends up as local news in Colorado. Shellfish move nationally in refrigerated trucks within days of harvest. The recall map follows the distribution, not the coastline.

Public health departments in the states that received the oysters are relaying the same alert to local restaurants, which is why a county notice in Colorado and a federal recall describe the same seven weeks of harvest. That relay is the recall system working as designed. The FDA widens the scope, state and county offices push it to the kitchens they inspect, and the shellfish tags in a walk-in cooler decide what gets thrown out that day.