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Why seafood spoils
Enzymes destroy seafood much more rapidly than they do chicken or other meats. You
can actually see the results more quickly. The eyes are sunken, the scales loosen, and the thin
layer of natural glossy sheen, that covers the fish turns blotchy and slimy. In more advanced
stages you see yellowish patches, that are growing colonies of bacteria. Firm and translucent
flesh becomes opaque and soft. Oxidation turns the gills from red to a brownish color. If you
cannot find the gills on the fish, chances are the clerk cut them out so the aging is not be so
obvious to the shopper. In fact, fishermen often remove the gills immediately when they catch
the fish in the wild, as the change in their color is the first sign of aging. Farm-raised fish are apt
to arrive at the market fresher than commercially caught fish and they seldom remove their gills.
Can you trust the label?
An excellent six-month Consumers Union survey (conducted in 1992) found that at least
one-third of all the fish in the market had incorrect labeling, deliberately or otherwise. Some
instances appeared deliberate because inexpensive fish had the label of a more expensive species
more often than the other way around. When Consumers Union purchased eight samples of
rather costly red snapper from various U.S. markets, for instance, they found that only one was
really red snapper. The others were lower quality substitutes. Eight of the 14 sole samples had
incorrect labels.
Purposely mislabeling fish is illegal, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rarely
enforces correct labeling. Many state officials also have concerns with mislabeling, but in
general they have little enforcement money, furthermore, cut-up fish is difficult to identify
correctly—efforts to monitor correct labeling are minimal. Matching protein signatures in the
laboratory is the only valid way of identifying cut-up fish, and sometimes even this method fails
because the proteins in different fish may have similar signatures.
The excellent grading system we use for meats and dairy products just is not yet available
in the seafood industry with the exception of some high-demand fish. Seafood is one of the least
regulated of all foods. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates wholesalers, packers
and processors, but no one monitors very much at the fisherman’s level or at storage before
processing. Retail sellers are under the jurisdiction of state governments, and it is at this level
that most problems exist. Laws vary from state to state with no consistent rules governing even
the use of correct names for the many species of fish.
The federal government has issued a fish grading standard, but so far its use is voluntary.
A government inspector may grade the fish in the processing plant as blemish-free, wholesome
and in good condition, but how the distributor, transport company and retail outlet handle it in
the next few days (or weeks) determines its quality when you select it from the fish counter. So
when you see the label "U.S. Government Inspected," it is not a guarantee of the current state of
the seafood.
You may also see a label stating that the fish in this package was "Packed Under
Government Inspection" (PUGI). That means that an inspector was standing by to observe
processing and packaging at the wholesale level. Again, this label only promises that the fish left
the processing plant in good condition.
We don't have a good way to avoid either of these two problems—freshness and correct
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