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American Fish Story 

America's Fish -- Fair or Foul?

Consumer Reports Feb01

Fish is among the most perishable of foods, which is why Bud Knowles, director of quality control for the Stop & Shop Supermarket Co., which owns 270 stores in the Northeast, calls it "the most unforgiving item we sell."

Unlike beef and poultry, finfish typically arrive at the processing plant dead-sometimes dead for days. To make matters worse, they can decompose much faster than beef or poultry. That's due to the kind of enzymes and bacteria found on fish and the effects of oxygen, which can cause the "fishy smell" that is one sign of spoilage.

According to the most recent government figures, covering 1993 through 1997, seafood was to blame for 4.4 percent of all known cases of food-borne illness with an identifiable cause. Shellfish caused nearly three-quarters of the seafood-related cases -almost all of them gastrointestinal ailments in people who ate raw shellfish harvested from polluted waters. But there can be additional concerns with other types of seafood: contamination with natural toxins, mercury, and fecal matter, among them.

To assess the state of the nation's fish, we sent professional shoppers to Boston, Miami, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Bettendorf, Iowa. Over the course of a week, each shopper visited four supermarkets (the kind of store at which most people buy fish) and one specialty shop. They bought fresh and previously frozen samples of five of the most popular types of seafood-salmon, tuna, catfish, shrimp, and cod-as well as red snapper and swordfish. To eliminate the possibility of bias, shoppers asked for a specific quantity of each type, then let the counter clerks choose the pieces.

Shoppers kept the seafood in its as-bought condition by storing it in ice chests for the drive home. They then immediately transferred it to insulated boxes filled with frozen gel packs and shipped it overnight to a laboratory.

There, we tested for freshness, bacteria, and potentially harmful chemicals. At a second lab, we checked whether fish labeled as red snapper-a desirable species-was really red snapper or a different fish entirely. We determined whether the per-pound count of shrimp matched the count on the label. We also visited fishing boats, warehouses, processing plants, and stores to see where problems might arise. Finally, we examined the causes of the widespread depletion of fish, a serious issue since the early 1990s (see "Are We Running Out of Fish?" on page 30).

RESULTS, IN A SEASHELL

Our tests revealed problems with some of the seafood we tested. Although most was fresh and safe to eat, there were enough exceptions to suggest that the seafood industry has considerable room for improvement and that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which oversees most seafood-safety matters, is falling short in key areas. Among our findings:

IS IT FRESH?

For our last report on seafood, in 1992, we assessed a fish's freshness by measuring its total bacteria count. We've since concluded that counting bacteria is not the best way to measure spoilage. That's because fish naturally harbor bacteria, and the count 011 even a fresh fish can vary ten-thousandfold, depending on the time of year, the species, and where the fish swam. A fish that starts out with a high bacteria count but is handled properly may stay fresher longer than a fish with a lower count that is mishandled.

In fact, the best way to test whether a piece of fish is fresh or spoiled is to use a well-trained nose. That's why, in this round of tests, we employed two fish-sniffers officially, "organoleptic evaluators"-trained in FDA methods. (In addition to sniffing, the testers checked each sample's overall look and texture.) We divided each of our 103 samples of salmon, tuna, catfish, shrimp, and cod into two parts, one for each tester. The testers worked independently.

Their verdict: 71 percent of the samples were fresh; 28 percent had the slight but perceptible odor and the slightly opaque, spotty, or soft look that mark the first stage of decomposition; and about 1 percent had the strong odor and opaque, discolored, or mushy look of advanced decomposition.

IS IT SAFE?

A spoiled fish is not necessarily unsafe to eat-if you don't mind the taste and smell. After all, bacteria that may harm people are usually destroyed by cooking. Still, there are a few other ways that fish can make you sick.

Histamine

If certain species-especially tuna, mahi-mahi (dolphin fish), mackerel, and bluefish-are not chilled soon after capture, decomposition produces this compound, which remains in the flesh even after refrigeration, freezing, or cooking. When ingested, high levels of histamine (also called scombrotoxin) can cause symptoms including gastrointestinal problems, hives, headache, and a burning sensation in the mouth. (Fortunately, an over-the-counter antihistamine is usually enough to control the symptoms.) Of our 24 samples of tuna, three registered well above the FDA safety limit of 50 parts per million of histamine-even though all three smelled and looked fresh.

E. coli In their natural state, finfish don't harbor this bacterium, while warm-blooded animals (including people) do. If a fish harbors E. coli, it has either come from sewage-contaminated waters (unlikely for oceangoing fish but possible for shellfish) or has been handled in an unsanitary manner. Not all E. coli will make you sick, and the bacterium causes no mischief if you cook fish thoroughly before eating it. But if you prepare fish carelessly-perhaps by handling raw fish, then touching other food-someone who eats the meal could get sick.

There's no federal standard for E. coli on seafood, so we gauged. our results against two international guidelines. Judging by the recommendation of the International Commission on Microbiological Specifications for Foods, 3 percent of our samples had unacceptable E. coli counts. Under the somewhat stricter Canadian government guidelines, 8 percent had unacceptable counts.

Mercury

 This natural but toxic element is released into the environment in unnatural quantities by such processes as cement manufacturing, coal-burning, and the incineration of some products. It drifts or seeps into waterways, where it is converted to methylmercury, a more toxic form that works its way up the food chain. In top-level predators, such as sharks and swordfish, methylmercury concentrations can be 10,000 to 100,000 times greater than levels of mercury in the surrounding water.

The severity of methylmercury's effects on the fetus was documented in the early 1950s, after a large-scale industrial release into Japan's Minimata Bay killed hundreds and sickened thousands of people who had eaten tainted fish. Pregnant women who had eaten the fish sometimes showed minimal symptoms themselves yet gave birth to children with severe neurological defects.

Since then, studies of children born to women routinely exposed to much lower levels of methylmercury in fish have found subtle but measurable changes in hearing, motor skills, and learning ability. Because the brain is particularly vulnerable during early development, methylmercury poses a special danger to fetuses, to babies who ingest it through breast milk, and to very young children. Last summer, a report by the National Academy of Sciences confirmed that children of women who eat large amounts of fish are at special risk of neurological problems. It also estimated that some 60,000 children may be affected by methylmercury each year.

Based on estimates of safe exposure levels and of average fish intake, the FDA has set an overall action level for methylmercury in seafood of 1 part per million (ppm). Considering the findings of the National Academy of Sciences report, this limit is too high to protect adequately against adverse effects on fetal development. In any case, the limit is toothless: It's not legally binding, and the agency no longer conducts routine tests of mercury levels in seafood.

Results of our tests of swordfish suggest it can be all too easy to ingest unsafe quantities of methylmercury. Eight of 16 samples exceeded the action level. In fact, the average level in all samples was 1.11 ppm.

The amount of fish someone would need to eat to exceed the maximum dose of methylmercury the FDA deems safe depends on the compound's concentration in the fish and on the body weight of the person. We calculated how much of our average swordfish a 132-pound pregnant or nursing woman could eat before reaching the FDA's weekly limit. Not much, it turned out. The woman could safely eat just 5.3 ounces (a modest-sized steak) per week. For the most contaminated swordfish we found, with 2.45 ppm, she could eat just 2.4 ounces-a few bites, at most.

Since tuna may also harbor methylmercury, we tested samples of fresh tuna, too. None of the 24 samples were above the 1-ppm action level: On average, they contained 0.25 ppm of methylmercury. Later this year, we plan to report results of our tests for methylmercury in canned tuna.

DOES THE LABEL LIE?

"Something that ain't" is the laconic description of seafood mislabeling offered by Steve Winters, a species-identification expert at the National Marine Fisheries Service laboratory in Pascagoula, Miss. Several species of fish, including cod, flounder, perch, and pollack, are commonly mislabeled, but Winters calls red snapper "the fish that counts." A sought-after warm-water fish in chronically short supply, red snapper has several less expensive cousins that look similar to the untrained eye and are, all too often, substituted for it.

At stores around the U.S., our shoppers bought seven fillets and four whole or headless fish labeled "red snapper." We sent the samples to a lab for a test that compared their protein banding patterns with those of red snapper. Turns out, only 5 of the I 1 samples were actually red snapper. (Four of the five were from Florida, native red-snapper habitat, where consumers may know a red snapper from, say, a yellowtail snapper.) The two most expensive samples, $8.99 and $9.99 per pound, were not the real thing.

In another test of truth-in-labeling, shoppers bought a total of 16 pounds of shrimp. Half of the samples contained more shrimp than the per-pound count on the label had indicated. That means the shrimp were smaller than advertised-and therefore less valuable.

WHO'S MINDING THE STORE?

Until 1997, the FDA-the agency nominally in charge of assuring a safe national supply of seafood-had severely limited powers. "Many seafood wholesalers never saw the FDA in five years' time," says Ken Gall, a seafood safety specialist with the New York State Sea Grant program. When FDA inspectors did show up, they lacked the authority even to make the processors keep records of how long fish had stayed at the plant, and whether they were refrigerated.

Matters changed significantly, at least for part of the distribution chain, in 1997. That year, the FDA started requiring all seafood processors and distributors to develop and implement food-safety plans under a process called HACCP. The initials stand for Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, and the program applies to any facility that handles fish after it leaves a boat and before it arrives in a store or restaurant.

Rather than mandate government inspection of fish at specific points, the new process aimed to build safety into the everyday operation of seafood firms. Under HACCP, FDA inspectors check that facilities have appropriate food-safety plans, then visit to make sure plans are being followed. "It's prevention, not crisis management;' says Lori Pivarnik, a seafood-safety specialist at the University of Rhode Island. "It's looking at where problems have a potential to occur, and taking steps to stop them from happening."

For example, a processing plant might refuse fish from any captain who can't produce written records showing that fish were iced as soon as they were brought aboard. The plant might also specify that workers dip their hands in disinfectant when entering or leaving the filleting room and wash at a sink whose faucet can be turned on and off without the use of germ-laden hands. A seafood distributor might specify that workers check the temperature in the storage room four times per day.

To the previously all-but-unregulated seafood industry, HACCP has been something of a shock. "It's extremely complicated for someone who isn't used to doing things that way," Gall says. "Even the FDA inspectors are still learning about it:"

According to Phil Walsh, manager of seafood sales and procurement at Stop & Shop, HACCP is gradually driving small operators out of business in favor of larger, better-financed companies. They can more easily afford the necessary procedures and equipment-which can involve everything from disinfecting a plant daily to buying shovels and bins made of heavy-duty, nonporous plastic in which germs can't hide.

Something as new and complex as HACCP might have been expected to get off to a slow start-especially in an industry that handles hundreds of different types of wild-caught products-and that seems to have been the case. As of 1999, FDA figures showed that of the seafood processing and distributing firms required to have HACCP plans, about one-third had developed and implemented high-quality ones. Another 23 percent had yet to file any HACCP plan at all. The rest had inadequate plans, inadequate implementation, or both, though they were doing better, as a group, than they had the previous year.

Moreover, though the FDA has more inspectors than before, they are still spread fairly thin, visiting each plant about once a year on average. "HACCP almost seems voluntary at this point, because they don't have enough inspectors," says Rose Ciulla, an owner of the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction, which is subject to the regulation.

WHERE THE RULES DON'T APPLY

Sketchy as the FDA's food-safety regulation may be for seafood processors and distributors, at least it exists. There is no such regulation for fishing boats themselves. Yet it's on boats that the trail of events leading to spoilage often begins.

We saw this for ourselves when our reporter tagged along with Louis Linquata, a buyer for North Coast Seafoods, as he assessed the day's offerings at the Gloucester Seafood Display Auction early one morning last fall. At the auction, buyers from seafood distributors, large retailers, and restaurant chains examine and bid on seafood from many boats. Some of the fish are unloaded straight from the boat into the auction's refrigerated warehouse, where they're displayed; others are trucked in from nearby fishing ports. They have been caught from one to five days earlier, says Linquata.

The way a fish is caught can affect its freshness and, therefore, whether people like Linquata will buy it and how much they will pay. Linquata picked up a Pollack pulled from the water alive the day before on a hook. He complimented its clear eyes, perfect skin, and firm flesh, as well as the bright red blood line by its gills. In a plastic bin next to this specimen sat a pollack from another boat, which caught the fish in a gill net. As a result, the fish was brought up dead or dying, and was crushed among hundreds of others. Now, its eyes were cloudy, its flesh softening and eroding near the gills. The hooked pollack might have ended up at a retail counter or fancy restaurant. The gill-net one might have become fish sticks.

As for the end of the distribution chain -- retail stores and restaurants --- regulation is left to state and local health officials, and it varies greatly.

Late last year, the FDA reported the results of a study in which its inspectors made random checks of food-safety practices in stores. They found that 34 percent of seafood counters weren't keeping fish cold enough, 14 percent weren't protecting them from microbial contamination, and 16 percent had workers who didn't follow good hygiene practices.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Although most of America's seafood is fresh and safe, its quality could be improved with better regulation and stricter standards. Here's what we recommend:

In the meantime, women who are or may become pregnant, those who are nursing, and young children should not eat swordfish or shark and should limit consumption of fresh tuna. Instead, they should choose species that are lower in methylmercury: flounder, shrimp, cod, haddock, mullet, scallops, whitefish, and tilapia.

Consumers can also take steps to ensure that the fish they eat won't make them sick. For advice on buying and preparing fish, see "Buy It Fresh, Keep It Fresh," at right.

From hooked to cooked

Between the ocean and your dinner plate, there are plenty of opportunities for seafood to spoil. Here are the major stops along that route, along with details about what can go wrong at each.

ON THE BOAT

Fish are caught using trawl nets, dredges, lines, or gill nets. Once on board, fish are gutted and sometimes beheaded, then stored in ice until they reach shore. Boats stay out for a day to about a week. A boat making longer trips needs a freezer on board.

What can go wrong: Many types of fishing gear cause fish to die before coming to the surface. In warm waters, they can decompose faster. The crew can wait too long to get fish onto ice or use too little ice. Fish caught early in a multiday trip may begin to spoil before being brought to shore.

BETWEEN BOAT AND STORE

Within a day after being brought to shore, fish reach wholesalers, auctions, or dealers. Within a day later, they are sent to processors or are processed on the spot. Afterwards, they're packed in ice or dry ice in rigid foam boxes and shipped to a retailer, a restaurant, or, in the case of large chains, a distribution center.

What can go wrong: Fish can get too warm while waiting to be received or shipped, or while they're being cut into fillets (workers can't cut in freezing temperatures). Careless checking can cause dealers or distributors to accept fish that are past their prime. Poor sanitation can spread pathogens to uncontaminated seafood.

IN THE STORE

One to two days after processing, fish land at specialty stores or at supermarket warehouses from where they are sent to affiliated stores. Store employees unpack and display fish, then choose and wrap them for buyers.

What can go wrong: Fish can get too warm during unpacking or in display cases. Fresh seafood that's contaminated can be allowed to touch cooked seafood and thus taint it, too. Fish can remain on sale too long. Counter clerks with poor hygiene can contaminate fish while they're handling it.

AT HOME

Your order of seafood travels from store to car to kitchen.

What can go wrong: Fish can get too warm in the car or even in the refrigerator. It needs to be at temperatures of below 40� F to reduce the rate of spoilage. Utensils or dishes that have touched raw fish can touch other foods, leading to cross-contamination. For tips on how to buy and prepare fish safely, see "Buy It Fresh, Keep It Fresh;" below.

Buy it fresh, keep it fresh

Let's face it: You have no control over what happens to fish during processing and distribution. But from the store to the plate, keeping your fish in good shape is up to you-it's your personal HACCP plan, so to speak.

Although entire books have been written about handling fish safely, all the advice boils down to this: Keep the fish clean and cold. A typical piece of finfish or shellfish will have a high-quality shelf life of eight or nine days after it's caught if stored at 32� F but less than half that if stored at 42�barely above refrigerator temperature. (A word about sushi: The main-but rare-health risk is contamination with parasites. Well-run sushi bars freeze fish before preparation, to kill the critters.)

When preparing fish yourself, follow the advice below.

HOW TO SHOP FOR IT

When our reporter ignored our advice and tried to buy fish that looked or smelled bad, she was pleasantly surprised. Most of the fish she saw seemed pretty fresh: In visits to about a dozen stores, she could find only eight samples that met her tow standards. Furthermore, it seems she was able to single out some stale fish. Although there weren't enough samples to tell for certain, our expert fish-sniffers detected a trend toward spoilage in the samples our reporter thought were questionable. (We did not include her data in our main analysis.)

HOW TO PREPARE IT

Are we running out of fish?

It is a warm late-summer evening in Gloucester, Mass., the picturesque yet gritty fishing port featured in "The Perfect Storm:" Standing behind a lectern backed into a corner of a room in the Gloucester House Restaurant, a willowy woman is saying, in a voice so quiet the microphone barely picks it up, "You guys are just way too good at what you do."

She is Penny Dalton, head of the National Marine Fisheries Service, which regulates all fishing in U.S. coastal waters. The weathered fishermen in her audience make it clear they are not happy about her agency's ever-expanding web of regulations covering when, where, and how they can fish-and, most aggravating to them, how many of those fish they can keep and sell. "You call it 'effort reduction,"' says one fisherman, "yet we're working harder than before."

Dalton's task is to enforce a federal law, the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Act, passed in 1976 and strengthened in 1996, which specifies that the nation's fish stocks must be brought back to a "sustainable" level-a level at which they reproduce faster than they're caught. She has a long way to go: According to the best estimates, nearly half the stocks of fish caught in U.S. waters and by American fishing boats in international waters are so heavily fished they can't reproduce fast enough to prevent their numbers from declining. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that the worldwide catch of marine fish is "at or near its maximum sustainable level" of about 100 million tons per year.

Fish are in trouble off all our nation's coasts: Pacific salmon off the Northwest, red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico, swordfish in the Atlantic, rockfish in the Pacific.

Among the most troubled are the fabled cod sought by these Gloucester fishermen in the Gulf of Maine. For nearly a decade, cod stocks here have remained at near-record lows despite major repair efforts, including a $25 million government buyout that shrank the size of the fishing fleet by 79 vessels; the closure of a 5,000-square-mile area of the Gulf of Maine and adjacent Georges Bank to all bottom fishing; and, at one point, limiting an individual fisherman to 30 pounds of cod -- just two or three fish, on average -- per trip.

Bad as the situation is here, it's worse in Canada. There, the cod population crashed so completely that an eight-year-long total ban on cod fishing has failed to bring it back.

These troubles may surprise anyone who has stood in front of a display case full of fresh seafood costing less than certain cuts of steak. What may not be evident is that some species that were once readily available, such as red snapper and bluefin tuna, have become scarce and that others, such as wild Atlantic salmon, have become virtually impossible to buy. What also isn't evident is that depleted stocks often force fishermen to work longer and harder to land the same amount of fish as before. Likewise, fish dealers have been forced to go farther afield to secure fish. At certain times of year, the fresh cod in Boston supermarkets may come from Iceland.

Concern about our future supply of food fish comes at a time when the health benefits of eating fresh fish are clearer than ever. Recently revised American Heart Association guidelines cite increased evidence of cardiovascular benefits as a reason to eat at least two servings of fish per week.

WHY THE PROBLEM?

"Technology, capital invested in boats and gear, and open-ended competition have destroyed most of our fisheries," says Peter Shelley, director of the Maine office of the Conservation Law Foundation.

Considering the last cause-competition-first, it helps to remember that fish is the only food widely eaten in the developed world that is still hunted in the wild. As such, it's vulnerable to the "tragedy of the commons:" That is, even though it may be in the best interests of everyone to stop fishing before a fishery collapses, it's in the best interest of the individual fisherman to catch as many fish as possible.

That brings us to Shelley's second cause of overfishing-capital investments. "Fishing families have economic needs today -- boats with gear on them, mortgages, kids in college;" notes Barbara Jeanne Polo, executive director of the American Oceans Campaign, a marine-conservation advocacy group. "It might be in their best interest to switch to [less destructive] gear or a smaller boat, but they have to deal with their reality in the present"

Technology, the third prong of the problem, has not only caused a dip in desirable species, it has killed fish that weren't even meant to be caught. Certain fishing methods or gear can reduce "bycatch" -- fish that are too small, unpalatable, over the fisherman's licensed limit, or caught illegally -- but not always. When the fine-meshed trawl nets needed to trap shrimp in the Gulf of Mexico are hauled up, for instance, they hold an average of 50 to 90 percent bycatch of fish. Among them are lots of young red snapper, which die in the nets and are too small to sell. The National Academy of Sciences estimates bycatch at about one-quarter of the annual catch worldwide.

Technology can also destroy fish habitats. Many commercially desirable species, including scallops, shrimp, flounder, cod, and rockfish, live on or near the ocean bottom. To catch them, most fishermen drag mesh-net trawls or metal-chain dredges along the ocean floor.

"These are the most damaging of all fishing gear," says Peter Auster, science director of the National Undersea Research Center in Groton, Conn. "They overturn boulders and tear away or crush organisms that live attached to the sea floor. This changes the sea-floor community from one of long-lived animals to one with a lot of 'weedy' species."

About 20 years ago, in their quest for ever-larger catches, fishermen developed "rock-hopper" trawl nets fitted with rubber tires that can glide over rocky bottoms that would have torn earlier types of nets. The bad news: Some scientists believe this gear helped hasten the collapse of the New England cod fishery by making it possible to trawl in rocky areas that served as refuges for young and breeding fish.

Even if overfishing doesn't harm habitat, it can alter predator-prey relationships. In the Gulf of Mexico, overfishing of menhaden has contributed to an explosion in the population of jellyfish, which compete with menhaden for food. In the Gulf of Maine, the decline of cod opened the neighborhood to dogfish, small sharks that compete with-and sometimes eat-cod but aren't as commercially valuable.

REGULATING FISHERIES

The federal government delegates most regulatory decisions to eight regional fishery-management councils, made up mainly of representatives from the fishing industry and government, with others from environmental and consumer groups. The result is a crazyquilt of local regulations that vary enormously in details-and success-from one region to the next. Supporters of the system say it's fair because decisions are made by the people most directly affected-the fishermen themselves. Critics say the fox is guarding the henhouse. The National Marine Fisheries Service can overrule fishery-council decisions but does so only rarely, preferring to rely on consensus.

In general, the strictest regions have been most successful at curbing overfishing. In Alaska, for example, regulators set annual catch quotas for every species. "Once the quota gets hit, everybody packs their bags and goes home;" says David Witherell, a fishery biologist with the North Pacific Fishery Management Council. "The season's over for the year." Alaska salmon (a different fishery than Pacific salmon) were once seriously depleted, but strict controls have produced what most observers consider the world's best-managed, most sustainable salmon fishery.

By contrast, New England regulators impose targets that rely on "effort controls;" such as limiting the number of days a boat can fish, then cross their fingers and hope the numbers work out. Too often, they don't.

WHAT COULD HELP

Given the world's huge variety of fish and fish habitats, there's no obvious single solution to overfishing. However, enough approaches have been tried-and their outcomes intensively studied-to start identifying corrective measures beyond licensing and regulation. These include:

To avoid buying species that are in trouble, consult one of three guides that group fish based on their abundance and on the environmental impact of catching them. The guides come from the National Audubon Society http://magazine.audubon.org/seafood/guide , the Natural Resources Defense Council www.nrdc.org/wildlife/fish , and the Monterey Bay Aquarium http://www.mbayaq.org/efc/efc_oc/dngr_food_watch.asp . The Monterey Bay guide is updated regularly. Although the lists are far from identical, they all give thumbs up to Alaska salmon, mahimahi, and tilapia and frown on swordfish, farmed shrimp and salmon, orange roughy, and Atlantic cod.

Which leads to a final point: It might seem sensible to buy seafood raised on a farm, but aquaculture has its own set of problems, as we note below.

FARMED FISH: THE PLUSES AND MINUSES

Three of the most popular types of seafood sold in the U.S.-salmon, shrimp, and catfish-come mainly from fish farms. Worldwide, about a quarter of the fish people eat are farm-raised. Aquaculture might seem the perfect remedy for overfishing-and for high prices, too. Farming has transformed salmon from a $10-a-pound luxury to a $4-a-pound staple. However, just as large-scale chicken and hog farms pose environmental problems, so does large-scale aquaculture. Here's why.

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