Seafood Safety : Seafood Sicknesses

by Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

(Page 2 of 4)

FDA Steps Up Programs

Reflecting this growing preference for fish, FDA has stepped up its programs to ensure the safety of seafood. Last March, an Office of Seafood was created within the agency's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition to strengthen the agency's domestic and imported seafood programs. The office will reinforce the agency's mandate to conduct enforcement, research, educational, and training activities on seafood. Creation of the new office was announced in a Federal Register notice published Feb. 26, 1991. Nationwide, FDA presently has some 300 people engaged in various seafood safety programs. An additional 270 scientific and inspectional staff positions will be added to the program over the next two years. Congress has authorized approximately $9.5 million for 122 new positions for seafood programs in the current fiscal year, and FDA has requested another $15 million for 150 more positions for the 1992 fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

The responsibilities of the new Office of Seafood include:

Overseeing seafood inspection programs undertaken by FDA in cooperation with other federal and state agencies.

Researching and testing methods to detect and evaluate the effects of chemical and microbial contaminants that may present public health hazards in fish caught in the ocean and coastal waters, and in seafood products developed through aquaculture.

Developing methods to identify economic fraud.

Administering the National Shellfish Sanitation Program, which works to maintain the safety of shellfish.

Evaluating the effectiveness of the agency's seafood initiatives.

Participating in programs to increase industry awareness of FDA seafood regulations and enforcement programs

Overseeing the development of training programs in seafood safety for FDA, state, and local inspectors. This would result, in part, in upping the number of FDA shellfish specialists from 12 to more than 50.

Together with the states, FDA is developing a program to more comprehensively monitor waters from which fish and shellfish are taken, and, in March, FDA announced that it had launched a special inspection of the nation's 4,100 seafood processing plants and other seafood establishments and has begun the first of four pilot programs aimed at further ensuring the safety and quality of seafood through surveillance from ship to final sale.

FDA plans to complete its special inspection of all seafood establishments listed with the agency within the year to get a picture of the state of current seafood handling and any new or generalized problems in the various parts of the industry.

The new pilot program is a cooperative effort with the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) of the Department of Commerce. It applies the techniques of identifying and controlling critical processing points (a system called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point methods), which FDA has already applied with great success to the canning industry.

FDA also is strengthening its work with the coastal states and NMFS, aimed at making criminal cases against "shellfish bootleggers," who harvest and sell shellfish illegally from contaminated waters.

In announcing the inspection program, Assistant Secretary for Health James O Mason, M.D., explained, "These new programs do not mean that fish are not safe food. What these new programs do mean is that FDA is enhancing its seafood inspection program to keep up with this increasingly important part of the American diet."

Mason said the Institute of Medicine backed the kind of regulation FDA and NMFS are trying in their pilot program with eight seafood processors — with representative facilities producing fin fish, crab, surimi (fish processed to taste like lobster or other shellfish), and other specialty products.

In these plants, what are known as "critical control points" have been identified. These are points in the process where problems can arise. The firms will monitor and record data at each of these points for review and inspection.

Mason said participating firms will eventually have a special seal with which to label their products — and it will be up to consumers to demand the new system when they buy.

Pilot projects are also planned soon to bring Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point principles to shellfish, as well as imports and retail operations.

The stepped-up programs also include more oversight of imported fish products (more than half of the fish Americans consume is imported) and of the fast-growing aquaculture industry. (Some 360 million pounds of catfish alone were grown on U.S. "fish farms" in 1990.)

Other Seafood Sicknesses

In addition to shellfish, the other popular raw fish dish, sushi, may also present dangers to the diner. Larvae of parasites — including roundworms, tapeworms, flukes, and flatworms — can end up in the meat of fish. A 1988 FDA report on seafood noted that if consumed by humans "... larvae may penetrate the tissue of the stomach or intestines and [be] misdiagnosed as ulceration or inflammation." Symptoms may be mild and temporary, but in a few cases severe abdominal pain results. If you want to eat sushi, find out if the fish was previously frozen, as freezing kills the larvae.

More common among the seafood maladies are illnesses traced to the Norwalk virus and the naturally occurring scombroid and ciguatera poisonings. While Vibrio vulnificus is the No. 1 killer among seafood pathogens, the Norwalk virus causes most illnesses that result from eating shellfish.

Gastroenteritis (inflammation of the stomach and intestines) is the characteristic symptom of the Norwalk virus infection. The virus comes from fecal contamination of waters where the mollusks live. Those polluted waters are the ones that authorities try to detect and close down to harvesters. However, some water men may work the areas anyway and offer their "bootlegged" products to the public.

About the Author

www.fda.gov
FDA is A United States government body that oversees medical devices, including contact lenses, intraocular lenses, excimer lasers and eyedrops. In the US, these products must be approved by the FDA before they can be marketed.