January 16. 2004The kick off meeting of the project 3.4 Biogenic amines in seafoods - assessment and management of consumer exposure (BIOCOM) in RTD Pillar 3 Seafdood safety was held on 16 January 2004 and less than two week later an outbreak of histamine fish poisoning occurred in Denmark. The project team obtained samples of the implicated seafood and analyses showed the product to contain luminous bacteria.
The BIOCOM project concerns new research that can contribute to reduce the unacceptably high number of cases of histamine fish poisoning. The project is lead by Paw Dalgaard from the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research (DIFRES) and carried out in collaboration with Anne Kjølby and colleagues from the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration (DVFA). As part of an EU project, carried out during 2003, DVFA collected and analysed several seafoods involved in histamine fish poisoning and this capacity to collect samples for outbreaks is most important for the success of BIOCOM.
The photo shows herring
fillet stored at 5°C and glowing
due to the luminous bacterium
Photobacterium phosphoreum.
It is interesting that luminous bacteria were found in relation to the first outbreak of histamine fish poisoning analysed by BIOCOM. In fact, the microbiology team at DIFRES has previously shown that psykrotolerant luminous and non-luminous bacteria can produce toxic concentrations of histamine at low temperatures. This information is not only interesting but also indicates a potential for BIOCOM to provide relevant new results on histamine formation in chilled seafood.
The luminous bacteria Photobacterium phosphoreum and Vibrio logei both can grow at low temperatures and have been found previously in high concentrations in various glowing seafood in Europe, Japan and the USA. Both these bacteria contribute to seafood spoilage, and glowing products should be rejected as they are, or soon become, of poor eating quality. Fortunately, luminous bacteria in seafoods are not infectious and do not cause typical food poisoning. However, Photobacterium phosphoreum produces histamine and can cause histamine fish poisoning with allergy-like symptoms. Histamine can be produced even at low temperatures, but only in certain seafoods that have a high concentration of histidine as a free amino acid in the flesh. Thus, shrimps and white-fleshed fishes cannot cause histamine fish poisoning, whereas glowing dark fleshed fishes (e.g. tuna, mackerel or saury/garfish) may contain toxic concentrations of histamine.
