An EU-funded project is making progress in developing sensors to detect harmful toxins and pharmaceutical agents that can be found in seafood.
ECsafeSEAFOOD’ aims to assess and evaluate food safety issues related to contaminants like chloramphenicol, azaspiracids, tetrodotoxin and sulphonamides that are present in seafood as a result of environmental contamination.
The project is also assessing the transfer of contaminants from the environment into seafood. Project partners are quantifying contaminants in commercial species and assessing the effect of cooking procedures on the contaminants, while assessments have begun on the potential for contaminant substances to interact with (and be absorbed by) an organism as well as the degree to which the contaminants become available to the target tissue after ingestion.
Close links with the Food Safety Authorities at national and European levels have already been established in order to ensure that these important entities are immediately informed about the outputs of the project, said Dr Antonio Marques, project coordinator, ECsafeSEAFOOD.
As a result, an online tool for stakeholders is being developed that will balance the risks and benefits associated with seafood consumption, taking exposure to contaminants into consideration. The project will also produce seafood safety guidelines to help consumers to reduce or eliminate the risk of contaminated seafood.
The ECsafeSEAFOOD contaminants database collates all related literature on contaminants of emerging concern in seafood species and includes the project results. It focuses on unregulated contaminants that give rise to concern from an environmental and public health point of view.
Mercator Media Ltd 2015