Dear Evert,
I was one of the people that originally flagged up this issue. At this moment in time the EU have not made a decision on the validity of this process, although my own personal opinion is that it is not strictly a legal process. The only country in the EU who have banned it is the Netherlands, the rest as far as I am aware are accepting it pending a decision by the EU. Apparently smoke is passed through some form of reservoir to remove all the typical smoke components leaving behind CO which is then passed over the fish. The CO fixes with the haemoglobin to give this permanent bright red colour. This is known as tasteless smoke. The practice is carried out in Indonesia as well as the USA.
The USA have approved the process and have a tasteless smoke association. But i believe it is banned in Canada and Japan.
At the moment the product coming into the UK is not labelled as being treated with CO. If it were I believe the port health authorities would have no alternative but to stop its importation, but it seems that everyone is sitting on the fence until a higher authority makes a decision as to the legality of the process.
Potentially, it is a dangerous process, particularly with regard to tuna, as temperature abuse or ageing will not cause any discolouration of fish treated in this way.
I hope this gives you a bit of background on where we are at the moment in the UK.
If you require anything more please drop me a line.
Regards
Chris Leftwich
-----Original Message-----
From: Evert Liewes <evertliewes@hotmail.com>
To: seafood@ucdavis.edu <seafood@ucdavis.edu>
Date: 19 February 2002 09:57
Subject: CO gas treatment of Tuna loins and Tilapia fillets
In the seafood archives I found some emails about earlier discussions on this subject of CO (march 1999, log 9902).
It is right that in the EU it is not allowed to use CO as an additive to fish products. However at present there are considerable imports of so called "cold smoked" tuna loins and tilapia fillets (China - Taiwan) which are exposed to CO.
The food authorities in The Netherlands did not agree to this treatment, but did not come into action as they were not sure of winning a case against the method of addding CO in a so called "cold smoking" process.
Does anybody know how this the "smoked" tuna loins and tilapia fillets are treated to get this nice red colour and is it really a kind of smoking process?
What is legal position the marketing of CO treated fish products at present in other EU countries and in the USA?
Does anyone use CO for the killing of fish and is this allowed? Does this also leave fillets with a more red and lasting colour?
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