More than 30 Louisiana seafood processors participated in a special training program that helps ensure that seafood harvested from the Gulf of Mexico’s waters is safe. The workshops, developed by the Sea Grant programs in the Gulf, were held Aug. 11-12 in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Additional workshops for processors and harvesters will be held in the coming weeks in Florida, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas, and more may be held in Louisiana.
Large portions of state and federal waters in the Gulf of Mexico have been closed to fishing due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which began in late April and was only recently capped. As much as 205 million gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf and several million gallons of dispersant were deployed to mitigate the spill.
“Consumers continue to be concerned about Gulf seafood safety, despite the fact that suspect waters are closed to harvesting,” said Lucina Lampila, an associate professor with the LSU AgCenter Department of Food Science and Louisiana Sea Grant. “These workshops are part refresher course on safe handling procedures for processors, along with new sensory evaluation training.”
The sensory evaluation training at the workshops included how to detect contaminated seafood by sniffing – a technique used by state and federal field inspectors.
The average person can detect the odor of contaminated seafood at a level of about 20 parts per million. Trained screeners can detect even lower levels. A short video on the process can be viewed at www.youtube.com/user/LouisianaSeaGrant , and a fact sheet is available at http://gulfseagrant.tamu.edu/oilspill/pdfs/DeterminingSeafoodSafety.pdf .
“The processors walked into the room with a look of skepticism mixed with deep concern,” Lampila said about the workshops. “What was so remarkable was to watch their expressions as we trained them with defined odors used to characterize fresh seafood followed by decomposing seafood and finally to the actual oil containing dispersant from the site of the spill.
“We then had them smell shrimp and red snapper that had been tainted with zero, 10, 20 or 40 parts per million of the oil containing dispersant. The looks on their faces as they could actually smell the odor showed a realization that one can really smell the contaminants,” she said.
“One processor said, ‘If I smelled that coming toward me, I sure would not consume it’.”
As similar workshops in other Gulf states begin to gear-up, officials with the Institute for Seafood Studies at Nicholls State University reaffirmed their confidence in the testing and research conducted by federal and state agencies responsible for regulating seafood and public health standards. “The results of these intensive investigations have consistently shown that Louisiana seafood products harvested from state and federally designated open fishing areas present no public health risk from the gulf oil spill,” said Dr. Marilyn Kilgen, institute project director .
A copy of the institute’s news release can be found at www.nicholls.edu/news/2010/08/17/nicholls-seafood-institute-confirms-government%e2%80%99s-assurance-of-post-oil-spill-safety/ .
The Gulf of Mexico Sea Grant programs consist of the Louisiana Sea Grant College Program, Texas Sea Grant College Program, Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, and Florida Sea Grant College Program. Collectively, the programs have established an oil spill web portal at http://gulfseagrant.tamu.edu/oilspill/index.htm .
