Expert Training: How to Assure Safe Gulf Seafood
Brent Ledet, senior engineer at Laitram Machinery, takes a whiff of a seafood sample to determine if it is safe or contaminated.
Even since BP’s runaway oil well began spewing millions of gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, there has been a growing concern about the safety of Gulf seafood. Despite unprecedented testing by state and federal agencies and independent laboratories which has unanimously given seafood on the market a clean bill of health and despite the facts, a misperception persists among many consumers over Gulf seafood.
Louisiana State University/AgCenter food science professor, Dr. Jon Bell, leads a class in seafood safety.
No one has more at stake than Louisiana’s 12,000 commercial fishermen, many of whom have fished coastal waters for decades. Their livelihoods depend on delivering only the best seafood to docks.
Fishermen and seafood processors participate in a training session.
Today, many of those fishermen are participating in a series of training sessions on how to assure that consistently safe Gulf seafood always makes it to market. The program is run jointly by Louisiana State University, together with the FDA and NOAA.
What’s the best way to catch seafood that has possibly been tainted by oil? Smell. The fishermen are being trained in sensory screening of harvest from open waters to verify the absence of contaminants.
As scientists have long known, the nose … the sense of smell … is a precise research tool, with the ability to detect even tiny trace amounts of contaminant.
The training … which is being extended even to members of the news media .. includes exposure to actual Gulf seafood samples spikes with potential petroleum samples. There is also detailed instruction on differentiating scents, and how to handle any seafood in question.
The whole purpose is to assure consistency … that seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is always the highest quality headed for markets, restaurants and dinner tables across America.
Category: Chefs & Experts
