For a smoked salmon producer, there’s no worse call to receive than one telling you listeria has been found on your product. And there’s no worse time than just before Christmas, when huge chunks of a smokehouses business gets done.

But that’s what happened in 2014 to Santa Barbara Smokehouse founder and CEO Tim Brown.

In routine testing at the company’s facility in Santa Barbara, California, samples of cold-smoked salmon were found to have traces of listeria in testing at the plant.