At the 90% confidence interval, a slight but significant bacterial growth (0.2–1.2 log units; pvalue > 0.05) was estimated to occur during transportation from oyster harvesting sites to the process facility in all seasons except in the winter (Table 6). This modest pathogen growth is followed by a decrease in V. vulnificus counts during refrigerated storage (0.2–0.4 log units; Table 6).