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If you ever eat shellfish, you'll want to listen to this story.

A major oyster and clam poaching case has revealed gaps in the system that's supposed to ensure Washington shellfish are safe to eat.

Washington Fish and Wildlife cops recently raided a seafood operation on Hood Canal. They allege an outfit called G&R Quality Seafood was a front for a nighttime shellfish theft ring. Olympia Correspondent Austin Jenkins has our story.

Let's be blunt. Shellfish safety is a matter of life and death.

Take Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning. In fatal cases, victims suffocate to death. Fortunately that hasn't happened in Washington since the 1940s.

But every year the marine toxin -- known as Red Tide -- that causes PSP is found in Puget Sound and Northwest coastal waters.

More common is an illness called Vibriosis. It's basically a wicked bout of diarrhea and vomiting. Last year, there were 49 confirmed cases in Washington from oysters alone.

Washington Fish And Wildlife officers inspect bags of oysters

Two Washington Fish and Wildlife officers and a seafood manager named Jimmy Nguyen are sorting through sixty bags of oysters. They're in the dimly lit cold storage room at the back of an Asian market in Washington's Kent Valley.

They're looking for the seafood equivalent of the Cracker Jack prize.

Jimmy Nguyen: "Found it!"

It's called a certification tag. Every bag of shellfish is required by law to contain one. Three of the bags here are missing their tags.

Officer Tylar Stephenson explains to Nguyen that by law she has to seize the oysters.

Tylar Stephenson: "We're not going to issue you a ticket or anything. We haven't had any issues with you in the past."

Jimmy Nguyen: "I will make sure they all tags on there, if no tags I'll put back to the truck." 

Tylar Stephenson: "Send them back. Say we don't want these ones."

A missing cert tag is a serious issue. In the event someone gets sick, it's how investigators trace where the shellfish came from and when they were harvested. That assumes the tag was filled out accurately.

Captain Ed Volz is a Fish and Wildlife cop with 34 years on the job. He says you wouldn't believe how easy it is to falsify a shellfish certification tag.

Ed Volz: "We have found in investigations certification tags where whiteout has been used so many times that you would guess they've been on eight or ten different containers." 

Volz recalls one case where a guy was digging hard-shell clams and selling them at markets in the Seattle area.

Ed Volz: "And they all came from very polluted sewage outfall areas, but the certification tags were that they were safe for human consumption."

Shellfish certification tag

Tagging violations are also part of the recent G&R Quality Seafood case. Fish and Wildlife raided the operation in April following a seven-month undercover investigation.

Investigators allege the company poached thousands of pounds of oysters and clams from state and private beaches on Hood Canal - then labeled them with falsified certification tags. No one is alleged to have gotten sick.

The investigation continues. Charges are expected. Our calls to G&R were not returned.

Captain Volz believes Washington's cert tag system has a fatal flaw: each company makes its own tags. He thinks that's got to stop. 

Ed Volz: "I mean anyone would come to this conclusion, is to have the government issue the certification tag and the government controls it."    

That's how it works in Louisiana which had a big oyster industry before the BP oil spill. Volz has been pitching this reform for years.

But just because a Fish and Wildlife cop thinks it's a good idea, doesn't mean Washington's Department of Health agrees. 

Frank Cox: "Our department has never got into the tag business. And I would imagine that would be an expensive process."

Frank Cox is a veteran shellfish inspector for the state. He says harvesters have to use waterproof tags that meet federal requirements.

But even a proper tag doesn't guarantee the health of a clam or oyster. What if the harvester left the shellfish out in the sun too long?

The Washington Department of Health has five shellfish inspectors to regularly check-in on more than 350 licensees -- from the beach to the shucking room.

Records show that when Health inspectors do find a violation, they favor warnings over fines. And in some cases the Department cuts a settlement deal: violators are allowed to pay a steeper fine and get back their license to operate right away.

Frank Cox says his staff walks a constant tight rope.

Frank Cox: "Well, our number one job is to protect public health, but in that process we also do work with the industry and I wouldn't go so far as to say we promote the industry, but we certainly don't want to put them out of business."

Washington DFW Captain Ed Volz

Shellfish in Washington -- oysters, clams, mussels and geoducks -- is a $100 million a year business. Demand constantly outstrips supply. That creates an incentive for illegal harvesting and black market sales.

Captain Ed Volz has just twenty officers and four detectives for all of Puget Sound, the San Juans, the lower Columbia River and the Washington coast.

Ed Volz: "Many of these things happen in the middle of the night through the thousands of miles of beaches that we have, loaded into vehicles to move out of state or country and we have to catch that."

In the G&R case, investigators allege the company sold poached shellfish to markets in Oregon and as far away as the east coast. The company was also a fixture on the farmers' market circuit in Western Washington before authorities shut it down.

Cynthia Warne manages the Port Angeles Farmers' Market on the Olympic Peninsula. G&R had a booth there as recently as 2009.

She says this case shows consumers need to be their own best advocates -- even at farmers' markets.

Cynthia Warne: "I mean we have no regulatory authority and we just simply don't have the knowledge or the resources to be the shellfish police."    

Washington's shellfish industry is very protective of its reputation. Industry representatives emphasize they ship tens of thousands of pounds of product world-wide every year with very few illnesses.

The FDA audits Washington's shellfish safety program every year.

It's opening day of the Bellevue Farmers Market. Fish and Wildlife officer Tylar Stephenson and her partner stop to inspect the Hama Hama booth.

Tylar Stephenson: "We saw that you were selling some oysters here."

The officers find no violations.

Manager Adam James is among those who say there aren't enough health inspectors and police with eyes on the shellfish industry. But in their absence, James says the industry tends to police itself.

Adam James: "We all want to sell shellfish and the deal is if there's an illness associated with bacteria due to exposure it hurts us all."

Industry leaders point to the G&R case as evidence the system is working. The Department of Health has yanked the company's license and is pursuing permanent revocation.

Fish and Wildlife police see it differently. They say the G&R case shows Washington needs to do more to ensure that raw oyster on your plate is safe to eat.