A Step-By-Step Journey: How Gulf Seafood is Deemed “Safe”
By Veronica Del Bianco
“Priority number one, from day one, has been the safety of the consumer,” says Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board (LSPMB).
After the April 2010 BP rig explosion sent millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and cost 11 men their lives, the LSPMB and others put a laser-like focus on seafood safety. From the beginning, oil and dispersant contamination of seafood was a real and imminent concern.
Although there were standard safeguards already in place to prevent and identify contaminated seafood, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Gulf states all agreed that closing oiled or potentially oiled water to fishing would be the best way to prevent tainted fish from reaching the marketplace.
“At the beginning, after the oil spill, we embraced every single closure of our waters,” said Smith. “To try and promote unsafe seafood would be a very short-term gain causing greater long term damage to our industry. It makes no sense. I think everyone understands that.”
What followed was a joint-effort by NOAA, the FDA and Gulf states to create a “reopening protocol” — the methodology to follow and results required before reopening any closed waters. According to the protocol, there are four phases of sampling and testing: baseline, boundary-surveillance, reopening and post-opening.
Phase 1: Baseline sampling
According to Dr. Lisa Desfosse, director of NOAA Fisheries Mississippi Laboratories, sampling began on April 28. This baseline data helped NOAA officials know what the seafood looked like before they were exposed to oil and dispersant.
Phase 2: Boundary-surveillance sampling
After NOAA first closed a portion of the federal waters of the Gulf to fishing on May 2, they began phase two of the sampling and testing protocol — boundary-surveillance sampling. This phase of sampling was conducted to make sure the closure boundary was sufficient — that any tainted fish were inside the closure.
Phase 3: Reopening sampling
In the sampling done in advance of reopening closed waters, Desfosse said by e-mail, “the closed fishing area was separated into 30 mile-by-30 mile grids, with sampling conducted at randomly selected stations based on depth and habitat type. This allowed the use of a variety of gear types that targeted the key commercial and recreational species being sampled.”
Phase 4: Post-opening sampling
All Gulf samples, state or federal, continue to go to the National Seafood Inspection Laboratory (NSIL) at NOAA’s Pascagoula, MS, laboratory where tissue samples are taken from the fish and prepared for analysis.
All seafood samples pass through sensory panels and chemical analysis, before they’re given a passing grade — and before the 30-by-30 area from which it came is reopened to fishing.
The expert sensory panel — the first gatekeeper — is comprised of NOAA and FDA employees who were identified for their ability to detect odors and who have decades of experience in seafood inspection.
Seafood sensory testing class in New Orleans.
Seven experts test each sample at three stages: raw odor, cooked odor and cooked taste. That means each individual piece of seafood is tested 21 times. By the time the sample reaches the cooked phase, sensory panelists must put some of the cooked sample into their own mouths.
Throughout the process a “blind sample,” a sample with known levels of contamination, was added to test the panel and ensure the quality of their evaluations.
“Sensory testing is about making sure that contaminated seafood does not make it to market,” says Steve Wilson, chief quality inspector of NOAA’s Seafood Inspection Program. “We have evidence that sensory testing can detect oil at one part per billion (ppb), which is well below the level of concern.”
Samples are then chemically tested — federal samples, taken from federal waters, go to a NOAA lab in Seattle, while state samples are shipped to FDA labs.
By late October, NOAA and FDA had developed a chemical test to detect dispersant in fish tissues. Consistent with what was known about the physical and chemical properties of dispersant, none of the almost 2,000 fish tested showed a dispersant residue at a level harmful to humans, and over 99% of the samples had no detectable residue at all.
Smith of the Louisiana Seafood Board continues to reiterate what he has heard from dozens of well-respected scientists: Every morsel of Gulf seafood has tested safe — and there’s no seafood on the market under more scrutiny.
“At the national level, we work with EPA, FDA and NOAA to monitor seafood safety,” says Smith. “At the state level, we work with the Department of Health and Hospitals, the Department of Environmental Quality, The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, the Louisiana State University food sciences department, and Nicholls State University Seafood Institute. Our sister states all have similar agencies. All of these agencies are independently testing for seafood contamination.
“They’ve run thousands of tests. And so far,” adds Smith, “we’ve gotten a clean bill of health on everything from all the agencies.”
Category: News
