Hector,
Very, very, very well presented. Nice job Hector.
Paul
Paul Dion Associates, Inc.
143 Sandwich Rd
Plymouth, MA 02360
USA
Key word: Prime Quality Seafood
In a message dated 11/16/2007 4:59:39 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
hmlupin@libero.it writes:
Dear Sonia,
I respect your and other views, but why do you need a sanitizer in first
place?
Fish taken out of the sea water or the pond (unless exceptional situations)
is not dirty. We can make it dirty if we do not handle and keep it properly.
Yes, fish taken right away from the sea or the pond has bacteria. It may
have some nasty bacteria, that inhabit naturally the sea (like Vibrio
parahaemolyticus) or the fresh water pond (like Salmonella spp or E. coli -contaminant
flora-); but most of the bacteria in fish is normal flora bacteria.
A couple of things about the nasty bacteria. We know them, we know how to
handle them to avoid problems and the solution in all cases is very simple,
chill the fish. Ice is the most common solution, but there are other solutions
like CSW chilled sea water.
If you chill the fish as soon as possible V. parahaemolyticus counts will
drop and you will prevent development of the contaminant flora. May be you
still will have a few of the nasty bacteria, but very often they would be not
detectable (by ordinary sampling and microbiological methods) or counts will be
so low not to represent a harm (very low risk).
This is not new at all, this is the key of T control of fresh fish, and this
is at the heart of HACCP.
Yes, you still will have normal flora bacteria on fish and that bacteria
will be the responsible for fish spoilage. Some of that bacteria even grow at
low temperature. But that bacteria is "competitive flora" and it is the first
line of defence against contaminant (nasty) bacteria. If you utilize
sanitizers (other than chlorine in very low concentration, that we need to be sure
that we are not re-contaminating the fish with processing water, not to sanitize
the fish) or antibiotics, or "magic mixtures" at this stage, guess who are
we helping to thrive.
Once normal flora is eliminated, contaminant flora can grow more easily and
quickly. This is the reason why thaw fish has shorter life than fresh fish.
In the open world, we can not get rid of bacteria. Even in the most clean of
the human bodies, we have about 10 bacterial cells for each human tissue
cell. Of course human cells are bigger and organized in a different way, but
without our bacterial cells we can not survive. Each human body is an
environmental system. You do not need to go to the middle of a jungle to see an
environmental system, you see one every morning when looking at the mirror. The same
with each fish.
We can choose bacteria work for us or against us.
Now turning to sanitizers in general. I think that there are two extreme
ways to work with fish at industry level. The first one is to treat very careful
right from the beginning and handling it at low temperatures (chill)
avoiding contamination and cross-contamination and as soon as possible. The second
one is to make a complete mess out of it, not caring for immediate chilling,
not caring for contamination and cross contamination and not caring for quick
processing, and trying to fix it at the end of through different stages of
washing and sanitizing.
In the first case we are going to utilize less water, less energy, perhaps
less manpower and definitely have less fish losses. In the second case we are
going to utilize a lot of water to clean and sanitize, add sanitizers,
consume more energy (e.g. just to pump the water), probably we are going to need
more manpower and definitely we are going to increase our fish losses (weight,
quality and nutrition properties; each washing takes micronutrients away).
I know that actual situations are in-between the two extremes. But today,
and more tomorrow, energy and water will be critical. With oil barrel reaching
almost US$ 100 each, guess which fish industry will have a possibility to
survive.
Kind regards.
Hector M. Lupin
---------- Initial Header -----------
>From : owner-seafood@ucdavis.edu
To : seafood@ucdavis.edu
Cc :
Date : Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:47:31 -0500
Subject : Question about sanitizer in water or ice for fresh/frozen fish
> Dear All,
>
> Could you please advice me about the best sanitizer, which can be used
with
> water or ice in fresh fish/frozen fish processing without altering
> freshness, color, odor and residual effect to fish products? Some
> processors use chlorine 1ppm as a sanitizing detergent with water. Of
> course that it is not enough to kill microbiological content effectively
and
> can't increase the concentration due to legality and safety of food
> products. 50 ppm of chlorine is normally used for the food contact surface
> in their cleaning procedure as it's around the highest concentration
> (50-100ppm) can be used for food contact in the industry.
>
> I hope you can give me some recommendations.
>
> Thank you very much!
>
> Sonia
>
> ___________________________________________
>
> Sonia Acuņa-Rubio
>
> NSF International
>
> www.nsf.org
>
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