Handling Seafood Safely

Seafood is one of the safest and most nutritious foods you can eat when it is properly handled and prepared. In the United States, it is extremely rare for individuals to become ill from eating fish, especially when basic food safety practices are followed. From the moment seafood is harvested to the time it reaches your kitchen, careful handling plays an important role in maintaining its quality and safety. Understanding how to store, prepare, and serve seafood properly helps preserve its freshness, flavor, and nutritional value.

Whether you’re preparing seafood at home or enjoying it raw, a few simple precautions can go a long way in ensuring a safe and enjoyable experience.

In brief, for eating raw finfish safely, using best safety practices avoids cross-contamination from bacteria and parasites.

To avoid cross-contamination:

• Purchase seafood from a clean shop with knowledgeable employees. Seafood should never be displayed or stored in a way that other foods can cross-contaminate them, especially poultry. Hands should be washed before handling, or gloves should be changed, and utensils should be used for handling one type of seafood.
• Practice safe hygiene at home; wash cutting boards, knives, utensils, and your hands with hot, soapy water before preparing seafood meant for raw or cooked consumption.
  

To avoid parasites:

• Choose only the freshest fish. Most parasites migrate from the belly cavity area through the fish after it dies.
• Avoid wild freshwater fish such as whitefish, pike, perch and lake trout; tapeworm is endemic to those fish.
• Learn to identify the culprits in fish; they are visible to the naked eye.
• Prepare raw fish at home very carefully. Slice it thinly and examine it. As an extra precaution, put the fish on a piece of plexiglas and hold it over a light bulb so any parasites will be.

Although seafood causes only 5% of foodborne illnesses, 85% of those cases are linked to eating raw shellfish like oysters, clams, and mussels. Illness can result from naturally occurring bacteria, algae-related toxins, or viruses and bacteria from polluted runoff.

There are shellfish that are at risk of cross-contamination that are also eaten raw, such as abalone and lobster, and those mollusks of which only muscle is eaten, like scallops and goeduck clams.

Local, state, and federal health agencies regularly test shellfish beds and water for toxins and pathogens. Harvest areas are closed if contamination is detected or after heavy rains as a precaution.

To avoid consuming contaminated raw shellfish:

• Purchase seafood from a clean shop with knowledgeable employees and displays National Shellfish Sanitation Program (NSSP) tags with all mollusks. The NSSP requires mandatory tracking of harvest location and dating of all commercially harvested shellfish to ensure that the harvest has taken place in waters that are certified to be safe at the time of harvest. (The harvest of contaminated shellfish by ill-informed recreational harvesters is responsible for the great majority of shellfish-related illness.)
• Give first preference to locally grown shellfish without far to travel.
• Eat raw shellfish only in clean restaurants where you have confidence in the abilities of the chef and staff.
• Eat raw shellfish during the cool winter months. Warmer waters encourage algal blooms and in some locations, refrigeration can be compromised.
• Avoid raw shellfish in areas of the world where sanitary systems may be inadequate, especially in the warmer areas of the tropics.
  

*Pregnant women, young children, and people with weakened immune systems or chronic illnesses should avoid eating raw shellfish.