New at the supermarket
Charles Mandel
Sun
Low-mercury fresh fish could soon land on Canadian supermarket shelves and in restaurants thanks to new technology that measures mercury content in fish in minutes rather than in days.
In California this week, wholesaler Pacific Seafood Group introduced the Safe Harbor brand of fish, which is guaranteed to have low mercury levels. The company uses a scanning system developed by San Francisco-based Micro Analytical Systems (MAS) that assesses mercury levels in different fish species in roughly 40 seconds.
Previously, retailers would have to send fish off to a laboratory for testing, a process that cost about $800 US and would take seven days for results. “It just wasn’t practical,” said Chuck Holman, a Sacramento, Calif.-based sales manager with Pacific Seafood Group.
MAS installs the machines in wholesale or production facilities and provides inspectors to run the systems. Fish inspectors use a biopsy needle to pull a 50-milligram sample from the fish’s muscle. Using a touch screen on the machine, the inspector matches the species of fish to a preloaded menu in the machine and then inserts the sample.
The machine weighs the sample and then compares the mercury concentration to U.S. Food and Drug Administration data, choosing a level below the median for comparison. In the U.S .the average allowable amount of mercury is about 1.0 parts per million.
The company charges a per-kilo fee for tested fish that pass inspection and become branded as Safe Harbor products.
In Canada, most commercial fish are allowed mercury levels of .05 parts per million. While hailing fish as a high-quality protein low in saturated fat, Health Canada advises pregnant women, women of child-bearing age and young children to not eat more than one serving per month of shark, swordfish and fresh and frozen tuna. Everyone else should limit their intake to one serving per week, according to the agency’s website.
At Calgary’s Catch Restaurant, executive chef Brad Horen said Thursday he’d “definitely” purchase low-mercury fresh fish if it was available in Canada. Catch buys about 907 kilos of seafood weekly.
“We’re very conscious about what we use,” Horen said. “Larger fish like tuna, we want to make sure it’s a high grade, but we also want to make sure that there’s no contamination.”
Ron Schindler, a New Brunswick-based senior vice-president at Cloverleaf Seafoods, said the company’s quality assurance staff are already looking into the technology, which he said is still unproven.
Based on the current guidelines, MAS expects to reject half the fish it tests, said Malcolm Wittenberg, the firm’s CEO, who noted those fish would be sold in the marketplace regardless. “The stuff we reject, which is legal for sale in the United States, will simply be vended to someone who’s not part of the Safe Harbor program.”
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
