With everything that’s going on with meat safety,
what is being done in the area of seafood?
Food safety is an important issue with everyone in
the foodservice industry even though we have the safest food supplies in
the world. As far as seafood goes, it has a strong safety
record.
The
latest assessments suggest that fishery products are implicated in less
than one percent of all foodborne illnesses in the United States.
Consumers can expect even greater assurance that
seafood is safe and wholesome as a result of a tough, inspection program
announced by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in early 1994.
The program is based on the principles of the Hazard Analysis Critical
Point (HACCP, pronounced HASS-IP) system.
HACCP was developed originally to assure safe food
for astronauts. Recommended by the National Academy of Sciences,
HACCP takes a proactive approach to food safety with mandatory measures
to prevent food safety hazards, rather than trying to find and correct
problems after the fact. Preventive measures are applied at each
point throughout the process where problems occur. These control
points are different for various processes and species.
For
example, critical control points in a smoked fish processing plant are
different from those in a breaded shrimp processing plant or a fish
processing plant.
Central to a HACCP program is the maintenance of
monitoring records, approved by trained and certified quality control
personnel and reviewed periodically by the FDA and state inspectors to
verify that proper controls are being maintained. These records
will give government inspectors a historical perspective on conditions
at the facility. In addition, all plants will be subject to
rigorous and documentable sanitation and hygienic
requirements.
Seafood
safety