March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Safeguarding seafood> FDA initiative aims to curb food-borne illnesses

When players for the Providence College men’s basketball team ate tainted salmon at a restaurant buffet in New York City early this month, it cost them the next day in a key Big East tournament matchup against Villanova.

Crippled by illness, the Friars lost their shot at the tournament title. No doubt the loss was painful, but it could have been worse for the disappointed players. Thousands of times every year, food poisoning is fatal.

A nationwide initiative launched by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is designed to prevent future food-borne illness outbreaks. By the end of this year, an estimated 1,000 Maine residents employed by more than 300 seafood processing firms will learn to comply with new inspection guidelines.

Contamination will be prevented through use of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point system, known as HACCP. First developed in reponse to NASA concerns about food-borne illness in astronauts, the system has been around for years as a voluntary program. What is new is the mandate that will require its implementation.

About 30 volunteers in Maine have been trained as HACCP instructors. So far they have shared their knowledge with 220 participants in nine three-day training courses offered from Boothbay to Machias, in Burlington, Vt., and Portsmouth, N.H. A 10th course was wrapped up this week on Vinalhaven.

Other sessions are scheduled this spring in Machias, Portland and Ellsworth, and training will likely continue through the end of the year.

“Part of it is just building up an information base, an understanding of bacteria, viruses and chemicals,” said Mahmoud El-Begearmi, University of Maine Cooperative Extension nutrition and food safety specialist.

A professor of food science and human nutrition, he is part of the team working to provide the state with HACCP training. The Department of Marine Resources, the state Department of Agriculture and the National Marine Fisheries Service are other cooperating agencies.

Together they formed the Northern New England Seafood Alliance last year to ensure that affordable, effective training would be available to those who need it. The cost has been kept to $100 per person. Other providers are charging as much as $675 for the same training, according to alliance Vice Chairman Ron Hoelzer of the Brewer-based Maine Sardine Council.

While some seafood processors were skeptical at first about the need for HACCP, attitudes statewide are improving dramatically, he said. Many participants have been relieved to learn that better record keeping will be the biggest required change in their process.

Assistant Manager Bob Hessler was one of a half-dozen employees from Ellsworth’s Maine Shellfish Co. trained in HACCP methods early this year. A distributor of fresh and frozen seafood, and a clam and shrimp processor, the business employs about 50 people.

“I think HACCP is requiring seafood companies to do what good seafood companies are already doing,” Hessler said. “If you’re not a good seafood company, you might have to make some big changes. If you are good, you have to document it — prove it.”

“On the first day, there’s a tremendous amount of apprehension and animosity,” Hoelzer said of the training sessions. “By the end of the second day there’s a real positive attitude. The third day we hold a workshop for people to work on their own HACCP plans. The enthusiasm is sometimes overwhelming. It’s inspiring.”

Enthusiasm aside, experts seem to be divided on the likely impact of the HACCP system. A 1991 study by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, endorsed HACCP use but found little evidence that added controls at the processing level would reduce cases of illness. Money would be better spent inspecting fishing waters, according to the study group.

There were about 6,000 reported cases of seafood-borne illness from 1978 to 1987. Seafood caused just 3.6 percent of all food poisoning cases in that 10-year period, according to the 1991 report.

The greatest risk came with consumption of raw oysters, clams and mussels. Most related illnesses are mild and not reported. No amount of precaution in processing can entirely eliminate the risks of eating raw mollusks.

Hoelzer said a handful of deaths a few years back led to a “perceived problem” so severe the seafood industry finally asked the FDA to help ease public fears. The two groups worked together to mandate the HACCP program.

Under the old style of quality control, inspectors tested a small percentage of a finished product and assumed, if the sample was OK, that it represented everything else. The problem lay in the assumption, Hoelzer said.

HACCP works in reverse to examine steps in the process before problems occur, focusing on “critical points” where the hazard risks are highest.

For crab meat, one of those critical points is cooking, said El-Begearmi. Under the new program crab processors will track cooking temperatures and durations to ensure that contamination risk is minimized. A critical point in the production of other seafoods is storage temperature. Above 40 degrees, bacteria grow much faster, said the professor.

Charlie Tait of Cap Morrill’s Fishmarket in Brewer said the firm began work on HACCP plans a year ago. Twice-daily temperature checks of freezers have already been implemented. He expects full HACCP adoption to be costly in terms of time and money, though he’s not sure yet what changes will be needed.

Tait believes the effort will make seafood safer if followed exactly, but expects some smaller processors will go out of business because they can’t afford to comply with the program.

The HACCP course teaches about types of processing hazards, how they produce illness, where they turn up and how to identify and prevent them. While every processing firm must produce a course graduate, it is not necessary to train every employee.

Those who are trained are responsible for conducting a hazard analysis of their workplace before the guidelines become law Dec. 18, and again every year or whenever the product or process is changed. Federal regulators will conduct on-site inspections to ensure compliance, said Willis Cobb of the FDA’s Augusta office, seafood program manager for the New England district.

Tait is skeptical about enforcement of the regulations. He said government agencies like the FDA “are being given more to do all the time with smaller budgets.”

“It’s not going to be as effective as it could be because they’re not going to have people to monitor it,” he said. “They’re just not going to have the budget to go out and do what they know they should be doing.”

There’s plenty they should be doing, he said, such as stopping some processors from using unethical tricks that include adding chemicals to scallops to boost their weight.

Cobb said Maine and Massachusetts have similar numbers of seafood firms, and are the Northeastern states most affected by the regulations. Alaska and Washington are other major producers of seafood.

El-Begearmi said that half the seafood consumed in the United States is processed overseas, and for the sake of fairness plants there will also be required to use the HACCP system in producing exports.

“Processors here will not be unduly pressured,” he said.

Despite some initial resistance, the seafood industry is likely to benefit in the long run from the stricter safeguards.

“The whole idea is to make the seafood consumers go and buy at the supermarket or fish market wholesome, safe and free of any contamination that could cause injury,” El-Begearmi said. “I think people will have more confidence in the industry.”


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