Microbial Concerns For Seafood Products

Bacterial Pathogens associated with raw and processed seafood

* Salmonella spp.
* Clostridium botulinum
* Listeria monocytogenes
* Vibrio cholerae O1
* Vibrio cholerae non-Ol
* Vibrio parahaemolyticus and other vibrios
* Vibrio vulnificus

Parasites that are sometimes found in raw seafood

* Anisakis sp. and related worms
* Diphyllobothrium spp.
* Nanophyetus spp.
* Eustrongylides sp.
* Acanthamoeba and other free-living amoebae
* Ascaris lumbricoides and Trichuris trichiura

Viruses that sometimes contaminate raw seafood

* Hepatitis A virus
* Hepatitis E virus
* Rotavirus
* Norwalk virus group
* Other viral agents

Natural Toxins that are sometimes found in seafood

* Ciguatera poisoning
* Shellfish toxins (PSP, DSP, NSP, ASP)
* Scombroid
* Tetrodotoxin (Pufferfish)

For processed fishcake it's those in bold that's more of a concern.

HACCP Decision Tree

Adapted from http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~comm/nacmcfp.html

Introduction

Ensuring food safety is detrimental, especially for food industries. If mishandling of food result in foodborne disease outbreaks, not only will the company reputation suffers, large sum of loss and most importantly innocent consumers will suffer too. In serious cases, it may even resulted in deaths. Hence, it is really important that food undergo strict sampling and control in mid of processing to minimize possible contamination that may result in foodborne diseases.

HACCP is one of the standard to help ensure food safety which takes each process into consideration and from there identify the critical control points of which may make or break a product safety. In fact to guarantee food safety is everyone's responsibility. From the food producer to middlemen to the consumers. If at any part of the chain, one mishandles the food, possible foodborne disease outbreak may take place. Often, as consumers, they neglected their roles in ensuring food safety themselves. For instance, consumers' abuse where they leave a supposedly-to-be-kept-frozen food out in the danger temperature zone (5-60°C) for more than 4 hours and they then consume the food, resulting in foodborne disease and point their fingers at the company.

Hence, it is everyone's responsibility to ensure food safety. Everyone has their own roles to play. If everyone were to play their roles well, eating is a great pleasant!