The woman at the fish display at the Chicago Omni store had read the papers and seen the TV news about a report from Consumers Union alleging that contaminated fish were being sold in Chicago and New York food stores. But she was not a believer.
”If anything was wrong with these fish, I`d have been dead a long time ago,” she said as she ordered some catfish and lake trout. ”I come in here every week, don`t I?” she asked, pulling the fish counter clerk into the discussion.
”But you have to watch out,” the clerk said. ”I think some of the things they say are true. Fish can go fast. But I haven`t had any complaints. I always say, `You got any questions, just ask.”`
At a northside Cub Foods store a young couple with a child tarried near the fish case, eyeing the monkfish, salmon steaks and catfish, but the woman finally said, ”I`m just not going to trust any of this.” Later they were seen loading pork roast and hamburger into their cart.
Others throughout the city who had read or heard about the survey also said they were cautious when they looked at the wide selection of fish and seafood products available to Chicago-area shoppers.
The Consumers Union report, which is to appear Tuesday in the February issue of its Consumer Reports magazine but was disseminated last week by the news media, said that of 113 samples of fish and seafood purchased at 40 random locations in the two cities, 33 were spoiled and 50 (mostly New York samples) were contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria. Eight of 20 samples of swordfish purchased had more than the maximum allowable levels of methyl mercury and many contained detectable (though lower than the federal levels)
levels of polychlorinated byphenyls (PCBs).
Fecal coliform, mostly the E. coli bacterium, comes from the intestines of humans or animals and is not found in freshly caught fish, implying that the fish were contaminated during processing, the magazine stated.
The CU report delineated abuses throughout the process of delivering fish from boat to counter, but placed much of the responsibility on the retail stores where fish are thawed, trimmed and displayed.
Although some Chicago retailers acknowledge there can be problems, they question the criteria of the study and the small number of samples tested by the consumers` group from the hundreds of stores where fresh finfish and seafood are sold. The CU reporter bought seven popular and readily available kinds of seafood-salmon, flounder, sole, catfish, swordfish, lake trout and clams-and sent them to a laboratory to be tested for bacteria content.
Public Voice for Food and Health Policy, a Washington-based consumer-activist and lobbying organization, referred to the report and described the country`s fish supply as a ”national public-health scandal, due to decades of government negligence and inaction.” PV has called for an immediate mandatory, federal seafood safety program.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which oversees the fish and seafood industry, maintains that the fish supply is wholesome and unlikely to cause illness. It also questions the standards used in the survey. With its current resources the FDA inspects very little of the nation`s seafood. Inspections that are made are concentrated on fish and seafood imports in areas where problems are likely to occur.
Lee Weddig, executive vice president of the National Fisheries Institute, which represents much of this country`s fish and seafood industry, says that some points of the CU study are helpful and point out shortcomings in industry practices, but he says, ”there is no indication that incidents of illness due to eating fish or shellfish are increasing. We think it`s actually on a downward trend.”
In Chicago, Carl Mitsakopoulos, treasurer of the Chicago Fish House, one of the county`s major wholesalers, which the report listed as selling
”potentially dangerous” clams, expressed the general feeling of several fish retailers interviewed:
”Here at the Chicago Fish House we just don`t have that many consumer complaints, either at the wholesale or retail level. If 30 percent of our product was tainted, we`d have a mob out here every day. I`m not trying to tell you customers are never dissatisfied, but I don`t have problems. Customers aren`t getting sick on me.”
Jewel Foods, which has fish counters in scores of Chicago-area supermarkets, is in the process of reviewing its seafood operation, says Diane Maffia, consumer affairs manager. ”Certainly if the allegations are true, we are disturbed,” she says. ”If we find any problems, we`ll take immediate steps to correct them. We have been improving our training program and sanitation standards for retail seafood operations.”
Jewel`s sanitation procedures have been reviewed by the FDA and local officials. ”They are not just printed in a manual but are reinforced by training,” she says.
And at Treasure Island stores, which get most of their fish from the Chicago Fish House, president Chris Kamberos says, ”What we buy fresh, we sell fresh; what we buy frozen, we sell frozen. All our fish is federally inspected (at the Chicago Fish House). … The fish department has a special cooler kept at 34 degrees, and what`s on display is packed in ice. We can`t fool around with fish that`s not right.”
The Consumers Union article also reported allegedly spoiled and possibly tainted fish and seafood samples from Dominick`s and Cub Foods stores, but spokesmen from those companies did not return calls from the Tribune last week.
The central criticism of the report was the criteria for measuring contamination.
The Consumers Union set its standard of spoilage at 500,000 colonies of bacteria per gram for fish and seafood, an number set after consultation with microbiologists, the report says. The numbers of bacteria were determined by what is called an APC, or aerobic plate count, of bacteria. Fish labeled as spoiled in the survey varied from those with an APC of slightly more than 500,000 per gram to ones with more than 27 million per gram, the limits of the laboratory-testing equipment. The CU report says the APCs exceeded 10 million in 30 percent of the samples and 27 million in 25 percent.
”One concern we have is that a lot of people do not know what bacteria tests really mean,” says NFI`s Weddig. ”Showing a (high) bacterial count does not necessarily mean the fish is contaminated. There is bacteria in all perishable foods. Without it there would be no yogurt, cheese or bread.
”I question a sweeping condemnation based on APCs (aerobic plate count). It is a useful tool, usually used in a plant-at the beginning and end of a processing line-to find out how much processing contributes to the bacteria count. But to say any fish with a count over X is spoiled is not legitimate. There is no single standard. Nobody has come up with an across-the-board level. There`s too much variability.”
Dr. George J. Flick, professor of food science and technology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute at Blacksburg, agrees that plate count always can`t be equated with spoilage. ”Some fish with a plate count in the hundreds of thousands would be spoiled,” he says, but others in the range of millions even tens of millions might be pretty clean.
”The plate count does give an indication of spoilage, if it is very, very high,” says Flick, who was chairman of the review committee for the National Academy of Sciences 1990 Seafood Safety Study. ”When it`s in the tens of millions and hundreds of millions it probably indicates spoilage, but in the 1 to 10 million range it may not be bad.
”The question is, Do you have any pathogens in the plate count-bacteria such as salmonella or listeria that can cause sickness?” he asks. The CU survey found fecal coliform counts exceeding 100 per gram in 22 percent of the samples. Though the FDA sets no limits on fecal coliforms, more than 100 per gram ”indicates something more than ordinary contamination,” the report states. Fecal coliform bacteria can cause sickness and severe diarrhea.
Consumers Union seems to have set its own criteria, says Christopher Lecos, spokesman for the FDA. ”They are equating diminishment of quality with the amount of bacteria,” some of which are good, some harmless and others toxic. ”The FDA looks for pathogens,” he says. Lecos also questioned the small number of samples.
Consumers Union also found an average of 1.14 parts per million levels of methylmercury in the 20 swordfish samples, 8 of which were higher than the FDA permissable level of 1 ppm. CU says that the levels should be lowered to 0.5 ppm, and Public Voice plans to file a petition to that effect with FDA next month.
The figure, like other such standards, is controversial. Weddig, for instance, says the level should be 1.5 ppm.
”The problem with swordfish and methylmercury is that each fish is different and unless you test every fish you can`t tell,” says Flick.
”Unless somebody develops a rapid test for methylmercury-and right now it`s not an easy test-it`s real difficult to tell,” he says. ”However, you don`t see a lot of people coming down with methylmercury poisoning.”
Research shows that although methylmercury will build up in the human body to a certain point, the body also will dispose of it over time, he says. There`s no reason to think that if you lower the allowable level people will be any better off. It`s probably just better not to eat swordfish any more than once a week, he says.
Almost all parties in the controversey say they support an increase in federal seafood inspection. The FDA, along with the National Marine Fisheries Service (of the Commerce department), is working on a pilot program involving 8 seafood processors and 25 retail outlets and paid for by the businesses and government. But even if that develops into a long-range, permanent program with hundreds of thousands of retail establishments, there is no way to go into each store on a continuous basis, says Lecos.
Meanwhile, Public Voice would like to see a safety-inspection bill introduced in Congress. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (D-Maine) told Public Voice it is a ”priority” on his agenda, according to Jodie Silverman, a Public Voice spokeswoman.
Also, although there may be plenty of cause for concern, even the Consumers Union article admits that there is no evidence of widespread disease or illness directly connected to eating fish and seafood.
”Last year`s findings by the National Academy of Science`s seafood safety report were that most seafood as sold is wholesome and unlikely to cause human illness,” says Lecos. ”That is further supported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). An analysis of the period between 1973 and 1987 showed of ”all food-borne illness, only 5 percent was related to seafood, and a majority of those cases involved raw seafood products, like shellfish, which we always have advised cooking.”
”There is no indication from CDC that incidents of illness due to eating fish or shellfish are increasing,” says Weddig. ”We actually think it`s on a downward trend. Fish rarely is the cause of gastro-intestinal illness because most fish is cooked and cooking destroys the bacteria.”
However, CU suggests that many incidents of seafood and fish-borne illness may not be reported because they are minor or not diagnosed as coming from eating seafood products.
Although there are some cautions about what to buy and consume, no one-including the Consumers Union-is recommending that people not eat fish and seafood. (See accompanying story about fish safety.)
”Think about the benefits of fish,” says Maffia. ”It`s a lean source of high-quality protein. To have people be afraid to eat it would be very unfortunate.”
