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When oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon well finally stops gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the decision about whether to reopen at least 81,000 square miles of waters to commercial fishing will rest with the trained noses and palates of a secret panel of nearly two dozen seafood sniffers.
They're the deciders, a group of experts -- highly skilled and exquisitely practiced in detecting unusual odors and tastes, including those of petroleum – that will largely determine the fate of the region's $659 million-a-year fishing industry.
Working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they will be charged with sniffing raw and cooked samples of 10 kinds of fish and shellfish, tasting a bit of each – and then deciding, yea or nay, whether an area can reopen.
"This is a major determination of the acceptability of the seafood coming out of the Gulf," said Steven Wilson, chief quality officer for NOAA's Seafood Inspection Program. "This is a major step."
Today you'll learn more about the program as msnbc.com live blogs a briefing at the NOAA lab in Pascagoula, Miss. Msnbc.com reporter Kari Huus will be on the scene, writing about a class of aspiring testers as they check a fresh load of seafood from the Gulf, and msnbc.com health reporter JoNel Aleccia will be filling in the facts and sharing interesting details about the testing program from our offices in Redmond, Wash.
When the oil-spewing Deepwater Horizon well is finally plugged or capped, which BP now hopes to accomplish by late this month, Wilson anticipates that he'll be running three "sensory crews" that will test up to 100 samples of seafood a day. For a specific geographical fishery to pass the first hurdle, five of seven testers on a panel must detect no trace of petroleum odor or flavor. If they detect any taint, that fishery remains closed. If the seafood passes, it is sent to a lab for chemical confirmation.
The new recruits are among some 40 state workers from the five Gulf Coast states that NOAA is teaching to be front-line testers. They will sniff fish on docks and in labs, determining whether the samples warrant further testing. If they clear the seafood, it will be sent to the secret experts, who are the final human arbiters.
That job is so politically charged that NOAA officials won't release the panelists' names. Officials say that the workers, including some who live in the Gulf Coast communities devastated by the spill, could face enormous pressure and even danger over their decisions about reopening the fishing areas.
"There are angry fishermen who are like, 'It's clean, let me in there,'" said Christine Patrick, a NOAA spokeswoman. "They're concerned not only for their objectivity, but for their safety."
The testers might have reason to be worried, said Capt. J.W. Berry, who runs fishing trips as a member of the Louisiana Charter Boat Association.
"If they don't open it back up, I can see them getting scrutinized," said Berry, 29, who also works as a New Orleans firefighter. "I can see them getting harassed and picked on. Not me, but I can see certain types of people doing it."
Click here to read the next post in this series: How we stumbled across the fish sniffers
Leave a Comment:
This is absurd. Does anyone really think that we consumers will accept such subjective evaluations as our benchmark for purchasing seafood?
you do with parfume, beer, chocolate, wine, shampoo, soap ... why not for your fish that may/may not be contaminated?
This seems completely absurd. If we can vouch for the safety of seafood, why not sniff for E. Coli contamination of vegetables? There's no peer-reviewed data base cited in support of this. What this says to me--don't eat gulf seafood anymore.
In the chemical industry, we are consistently trained not to rely on smell as an indicator for safety since there are many materials who's olfactory detection limit is significantly higher than an acute lethal exposure dose. In plain english, there are plenty of substances out there that can hurt you long before you can smell them. Olfactory perception should be used only for aesthetics and quality assesment, not basic food safety.
Benzene is colorless with a sweet smell and the other toxic chemicals in crude oil have no smells and attack the blood cells and take a few years for cancers like leukemia to set in.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME??????????????????
You think I will ever eat seafood again from anywhere near the Gulf OR the Atlantic??????
They've been infusing poisonous dispersants into that crap for 2 1/2 months(with no stopping it because they sell it to themselves)... AND SURPRISE.... DUH!!! IT DISPERSES!!!!! To our eyes/lungs/skin.
There will be birth defects, miscarriages, lung diseases, eye problems and God only knows what else in the southern states. And they think they can talk a sane person into EATING FROM THAT TROUGH EVER AGAIN????
Lets presume that these guys have a very good sens of smell. After couple of tens of fish smelled their sens of smell it's reduce to 0. It's a fact.
This perfectly fits with all the other ridiculous plugging, dispersing, cleaning, communicating measures that have been so badly botched so far......
This has got to be a joke, right? I'll pay triple the price for Pacific seafood, before I rely on this. Man, I can't stop laughing at this guy. There's always been the joke of the smell of seafood, and — — — — _, you fill in the blanks. Hell, I love eating both, but not from the Gulf/Atlantic/Caribbean anymore, neither of them. LOL
Apparently, the six commentators above are either unable to read or comprehend the English language. The article clearly states that if the fish passes the sniff test it then goes to a lab for chemical confirmation. No wonder so many people spread ignorant rumors.
The ignorance is having some fool "sniff" fish, that's some dumb sh!t.
"They will sniff fish on docks and in labs, determining whether the samples warrant further testing. If they clear the seafood, it will be sent to the secret experts, who are the final human arbiters."
Yes the secret experts that makes me feel so much better.
I see by your name that your interest is not for my health. I'm sorry for your loss. Truly.
But theres no way I will ever listen to any of these reports by corporations to tell my what THEY think I should buy/ or eat /or do. These Greedy companies and corporations only live by one rule ....make money on the backs of humans and the elimination of the environment.
How can you continue to defend them when they have ruined your industry????
Good selective quoting there, Hanover. The point Fisherman was making is that this is basically a triage. The rounds of scenting are not the final step. Once the fish samples make it through two rounds of sniffers they THEN go to a final, chemical testing step to confirm the sniffers or catch any miss on their part.
The purpose of this multi-step process is to prevent the chemical testing labs from being overwhelmed and determination of the status of any particular fishing ground from being excessively delayed, further harming these people's practice of their livelihood.
The poor reading comprehension of some people make me far more frightened about the products of the American educational system than about any tainted fish from the Gulf of Mexico.
So if they smell it in 1 fish it goes to testing, then from there the tests, lets say, its has a good smell and good lab work. Now they say since that 1 fish is good in smell and lab tests, that it is okay to fish a huge area of water. That my friend is completely absurd. Yes I do understand that they will do this over and over again and do testing, but who is doing the testing and what tests are they doing to make sure it is safe for consumption? Hopefully a government office is not doing the testing, since it was the E.P.A. that said Corexit 9500 was safe to use.
Now lets talk about the last quote "Sniffers could face enormous pressure and even danger over their decisions about reopening the fishing areas." HELLO, HELLO, is anyone in there! To me it sounds like BP recommended this so they wouldn't have to repay fisherman's lost wages.
Wait a second, did they say taste, "five of seven testers on a panel must detect no trace of petroleum odor or flavor." what happens to a smeller if he tastes petrol, wont he get sick. Plus if he tastes petrol, wont his senses be messed up a little bit after that.
Here is my idea, if the sniffers and lab say it is safe to fish these waters, let the sniffers and lab dudes swim in that said area for a couple hours.
Hmmmmmm, something smells fishy.
I believe the article states that the "sniff testing" is an initial test and the fish/seafood would be sent for chemical testing only if passed by the "sniffer". That being said, I can only say that it appears the well being of the consumer is not of utmost importance, but rather the health of the fishing industry. This isn't a new tactic based on the number of recalls each month by the FDA and the food industry in general. New products are consistently put on the market and the general population is the test market for safety or side effects. I will not purchase seafood products from the Gulf of Mexico for years to come.
the sniffing, as a preliminary test, is actually a good thing. These testers are not evaluating the safety of the fish, but the flavor and smell. These testers are only making sure that the fish smells and tastes like fish should, not that it is safe for you. Like fisherman above said, it is only the fish in which the testers are unable to detect oil that get passed on to be tested chemically. This is a good thing, by not requiring scientists to test every area, only ones that these "smellers" find to be worth testing. This will save time and allow scientists to find the areas that are actually safe for fishing again. And for those who are saying that you will never buy atlantic seafood again, once the oil is gone, the fish will be fine to eat. By boycotting it, you are helping in the destruction of the southern coastal economies. and most of the atlantic fish and shrimp you eat these days is farmed anyways. So you'd be hurting an industry that is not implicated in the oil spill at all.
One thing you obviously do not know is that a lot of fish farming is not done tanks. They set up pens in waterways to raise the fish and shellfish are raised in beds in the waterways as well. This subjects these fish and shellfish to the same pollutants as wild caught fish. For this reason, a lot of farm raised fish is no safer than wild caught when it comes to pollution contamination.
I am concerned with the dispersants and chemical residual left by the oil as well. Just as the oil industry has been woefully unprepared for this oil spew, I am concerned that the regulators are just as unprepared for tainted seafood.
Why not use mechanical noses instead, much for sensitive, and reproducible...
CANCER. I've read that it takes cancer 20 to 30 years to develop from something you were exposed to. So in the name of money, of course the invisible experts, or shall we just refer to them as Oz, will say it's safe to eat fish fed on poisonous Corexit, or diesel fuel (a million gallons of it was onboard the Deepwater Horizon when it sank), and of course the 150 million gallons of crude, and untold gallons of other hydrocarbons gushing from the bowels of the earth. And now it's coming out in the news about the 75,000 capped wells, and industrial junk that lays at the bottom of the gulf, then there's the polluted Mississippi river effluent. But hey, eat up. No way! The food can only be as safe as the regions ecology. And it's quite obvious that the gulf region is a very sick puppy. And the BP gusher is the euphanizing shot that's going to put it down. What a shame. This is the example we set for the world, our children, and those of us living today. We rush to save the rain forests, and save the ocean, and save the forests, but meanwhile, our own back yard is trashed every day. Time for society to clean up its act. The rate of cancer is already increasing in our country. I wonder why?
And people were worried that Obama was not creating jobs. How ashamed do you feel now? Oily fish sniffers. It’s a career path in Obamaland.
can anyone tell me the protocol for the panel of sniffers ? have they all been prescreened for flatulation problems ? I fear we may have overlooked cross contamination in the scent lab. Give me a break - my chances of developing kidney or liver cancer from oil tainted seafood lies in the hands or rather the "snot locker" of a government employee - only in america - too ridiculous
GOT BEEF