Thanks to all,
The fish was a mackerel (scomber japonicus peruvianus) purchased in a public
market. The definition for a peruvian public market is very different to
that from a US or european ones. Usually a public market is a informal
place where products are offered with no minimal hygiene conditions, so that
mackerel was not frozen, handled without wearing gloves ... even the place
where I get it was dirty and several flies were seen. Temperature was about
16 oC. Time at the moment to be purchased: 1400hr. The other important
point to be explained is that public market sellers get their fish from a
big sea-product market (fishermen arrived to the sea-product market at
4:00am, almost immediately after have caught fish ), which is open until
7:00am. Thus, that fish had been at room temperature at least for 7 hours
(assuming, which may be not true, that minimal food safety norms were
accomplished in the vessels).
I think that much more studies should be conducted about histamine because
it is possible that histamine leveld depend on other additional factor ...
Victor
-----Original Message-----
From: John DeBeer [mailto:john.debeer@cox.net]
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 3:55 PM
To: 'Gonzaga Victor (Contractor), NMRCD Lima'; seafood@ucdavis.edu
Subject: RE: Question from Peru
Bad odors can be from high temperature spoilage or low temperature spoilage.
Histamine forms fastest at high temperature. If you have bad odors from low
temperature spoilage, it would not be unusual to have low levels of
histamine.
I have plenty of papers in pdf on histamine spoilage. If you want copies
let me know.
Best Regards
John DeBeer
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-seafood@ucdavis.edu [mailto:owner-seafood@ucdavis.edu] On Behalf
Of Gonzaga Victor (Contractor), NMRCD Lima
Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 1:07 PM
To: 'seafood@ucdavis.edu'
Subject: Question from Peru
Hi everyone,
I've just been registered to this listserv. Thanks to Pamela for allowing me
to be part of this group.
Well, briefly, I conducted a small study among scombridae fish in Lima, all
of them from different public markets and two big sea-product markets. My
concern was about some samples which smell really bad but histamine levels
were under 2 PPM. Fish was tested by Veratox. Some comments? I know there
is not relation between high veratox levels and no odor, but there is a
relation between bad odor and high levels?
Regards,
Victor
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