Back to Food Poisoning

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued a letter to seafood processors instructing them to update their safety plans and to avoid buying certain fish caught in the northern Gulf of Mexico after numerous outbreaks of food poisoning that were once rare in the United States.

The advisory applies to 13 species of fish caught within a 50-mile radius of the coral reefs in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary. It follows months of research by the FDA after a recently reported case of ciguatera fish poisoning from a grouper caught 100 miles off the coast of Galveston.

The FDA recommends that primary seafood processors avoid purchasing these species:

• Caught within 10 miles of Flower Garden Banks - marbled grouper, hogfish, blackfin snapper, gag grouper, dog snapper, scamp grouper, yellowfin grouper.
• Caught within 50 miles of Flower Garden Banks - yellow jack, horse-eye jack, amberjack, black jack, king mackerel, and barracuda.

Only a few such cases of ciguatera food poisoning had been reported in the past 25 years, but "a reasonably likely hazard" for some species caught in the northern Gulf, the FDA said in the letter.

Ciguatera toxin causes initial symptoms similar to food poisoning, but the toxin invades cells and works its way into the human nervous system, producing a range of health problems.

Symptoms range from pain and fatigue to more intangible problems, such as anxiety. A telltale sign of ciguatera poising is a reversal of hot and cold sensations. The side effects from the illness can last weeks, months, or, even years.

Cases of ciguatera can be difficult to confirm because people do not often save samples of the fish they ate.

The new FDA advisory has enormous implications because it requires seafood processors to change their written food safety plans and requires processors to implement such plans to control hazards.

The health advisory implies that it will remain in effect indefinitely, and the government intends to continue sampling fish over time to see if the ciguatera toxin persists.

Although ciguatera is the most common form of seafood poisoning, it is so rare in most places that doctors often have never heard of it or know little about it. The state of Florida requires medial providers to report cases, although it is still unclear how many people are sickened each year. Experts estimate between 50,000 and 500,000 ciguatera poisoning cases yearly.

There is no antidote, and no amount of boiling, frying, grilling, or baking will remove the toxin from a fish. It doesn’t change the taste or texture of meat, and there is no reliable, commercially available test.

Reference:

"Agency to issue seafood warning," The Daily News – Galveston County, Mark Collette, December 2008.