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Despite a string of initiatives on food safety promised by Beijing policymakers, China’s latest seafood-safety mess looks worryingly familiar.
Shrimp injected with a translucent glue-like gelatin was initially spotted by a consumer in Tianjin in September 2009, whose blogging on the issue drew little national notice.
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BOSTON—Those plump and tempting scallops behind the fish counter glass might be a lot smaller than they look — a sodium-based compound can bloat scallops well past their actual size. And that pollock fillet isn’t such a good deal if the price includes the layers of ice glazed onto it to keep it fresh.
This “overglazing” rips off consumers, as does so-called “soaking” of scallops, which can also alter the taste of the shellfish. At the International Boston Seafood Show this week, a top federal seafood quality officer announced his agency was increasing efforts to stop these and other types of seafood fraud.
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Having reported on seafood fraud extensively in the past (in June 2007, July 2009 and March 2012), I attended Monday’s International Boston Seafood Show conference, “Seafood Substitution: Efforts and Strategies to Eliminate Mislabeling and Fraud from the Marketplace,” with great interest.
A diverse and experienced panel of speakers was lined up, including a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) representative, a former fisheries law enforcement officer, the secretary of the Better Seafood Bureau, a federal seafood-inspection officer and an executive from a DNA-identification laboratory that tests suspicious seafood. Everyone brought a unique perspective and expertise that more people in the industry need to hear.
“Be proactive” when it comes to dealing with the new Food Safety Modernization Act — that’s the main message that panelists delivered at the final conference of this year’s International Boston Seafood Show.
The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011 has radically changed the way seafood is sourced, distributed and imported into the United States. With the Panelists at the “Food Safety Compliance Under the New Food Safety Modernization Act of 2001” discussed the implications of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new regulations and real-life ways to best comply with them.
For the past three years, scientists, engineers and operators in the farming industry have been developing the well-boat technology of the future. Here are some of the results.
In the future, aquaculture will have to adapt to stringent standards of hygiene and infection control, say researchers, so they have developed a well-boat concept packed with technology that will lead to more environmentally friendly operation and better-quality fish.
Well-boats are used to transport live fish in modern fish-farming, both out to the sea-cages and from the cages to the slaughterhouse. The problem is that at present, these boats release water from the tanks that the fish swim in as the are being carried. This means that diseases and parasites such as lice can be spread with the water, explains researcher Mats A Heide. [Read more…]