Oh great. They're weeding out bad gulf seafood by smelling it.

[loudsue]

(Aug. 8) -- Already put off by the thought of oily gulf seafood? Well, it probably won't help your appetite to know that the food is being smelled first.

But it should. Scientists say the skeptics just don't know enough about their own noses. With many petrochemicals, humans will notice 1 part per million, or even less, of their smelly components in air. That's like a few tablespoons in an Olympic-sized swimming pool (if you pretend those chemicals have the same density as water).


Bill Haber, AP
William Mahan of the University of Florida demonstrates how to smell for taint in seafood at NOAA's seafood inspection program in Pascagoula, Miss.That's why the FDA says it's very unlikely for tainted seafood to reach your plate after a battery of smell tests. And our sensitivity to such small traces of oil makes it even harder for higher, toxic levels to go undetected.

"The human sense of smell is more sensitive than many instruments that chemists and biochemists rely upon," said Charles Wysocki of the Monell Chemical Senses Center, the world's only think-tank on the subject.


<snip>

Sure makes me feel better. NOT.

[jody]

1. Immediate thought is apply that test to politicians. n/t

[loudsue]

30. Peeeyuuu. Right now they all stink.

Them AND their corporate masters .... stink. bad.

[Skink]

2. Corexit smells like Chicken

[Altoid_Cyclist]

4. I'm in a foul mood today and that still made me laugh!

I wish that the subject matter was something that I could laugh about, but in times like these, I'll take any levity that I can get.

[MineralMan]

3. Actually, the human nose works very well for detecting

petrochemicals. It's a lot faster than lab tests, and quite accurate in detecting very minute amounts of most petroleum-based chemicals.

[Whoa_Nelly]

12. The olfactory system loses its sensitivity to smell

with constant input of the same or several odors in succession. (Smell testers are also smelling the food odor as well as trying to be sensitive to the petrochemical smell.)

Think of this way: You work in a restaurant. Each day you come into work, you immediately smell the grease of the deep fryer. After being at work for about 15-30 minutes, you are no longer so keenly aware of that smell. You go home from work, take off your uniform/work clothes. Change into something else to wear, then pick up your work clothes to wash them. Suddenly you smell the grease of the deep fryer as it has permeated your clothing while working, yet you were not aware that your clothing had that odor until you moved away from it and then re-introduced it to your olfactory system.

Also, use of aspirin, a person's health both mentally and physically, among some of the prevailing factors, can interfere with possessing or processing odors for optimum or correct odor identification. To rely simply on sense of smell in smelling one food after another to detect the safety of that food inherently carries too many chances of gross negligence, increasing the odds of poor or unsafe food quality.

Me? Would rather that there be a chemical protocol test of parts per billion of each individual food item to determine the quality of safety for human consumption, as well as for passing on the lesser to animal/pet food products, especially when that part of the food chain is coming from waters known to be poisoned..

[MineralMan]

16. This is true. I assume that is being taken into consideration, like

it is in all olfactory tests of things. Lots of professional noses out there in the food and fragrance industry. It's a profession.

Do you suppose that they wouldn't consider such a thing?

Right now, I imagine they're comparing the results from these sniff tests with actual lab results. If the sniff tests prove to be accurate, then they'll continue to use them, since the seafood would spoil while waiting for lab tests on every net full of seafood.

Still, everyone's free to avoid this seafood if they're concerned about it. I don't know about you, but everything I cook that comes from an animal of any kind gets a sniff test from me.

[Whoa_Nelly]

23. "Do you suppose that they wouldn't consider such a thing?"

I presume nothing when it comes to safety standards being met by what are supposed to be our government guidelines and law.

A few cases in point:

~The air quality at ground zero just a few days after the twin towers destruction on 9/11 was declared safe to breathe with workers later having serious to deadly respiratory and/or cancer-based illnesses.

~Gulf oil cleanup workers were (are) exposed to Corexit, and are experiencing poisoning symptoms, although deemed safe and not an issue.

~E.coli and salmonella enters out food chain frequently even though standards have supposedly been met at processing plants.

So, am very skeptical re: simply smelling food to qualify and deem it safe.

Am more glad than ever at this time that I'm a vegetarian.

[gvstn]

27. +1 Concrete examples of the problem again.

[Whoa_Nelly]

31. You can have at it when it comes to seafood from those waters :)

Am sure there is batch testing being done, meaning that a certain percentage will be randomly checked, and if that percentage passes the sniff test, then the batch must all be okay. The same goes for lab testing in order to speed the process. However, would think lab testing would be more accurate: If say 20/100 in a batch passes, then the assumption would be that the entire batch is safe. This is how it's done in the meat industry, and the tests do not take so long as to allow spoilage, and food is preserved through certain means to offset the possibility of spoilage.

Ever see the online movie, "Earthlings"? Highly recommend this movie. http://www.unleashed.org.au/features/earthlings/

[gvstn]

26. +1 Great example!

[nashville_brook]

18. howzit at detecting corexit?

[nashville_brook]

20. this is the kind of pseudoscience you get when all the real scientists have been bought off

[Whoa_Nelly]

5. Artiicle link and pic of "Scientific Smelling Method"

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/the-nose-knows-if-gulf-seafood-is-safe-to-eat/19577398

Waft Wafting Waft again..OK! Sending on for USDA Stamp Approval.... Next!

[loudsue]

6. Many many things affect your sense of smell. Age being one of them.

They shouldn't be allowing any fish from the gulf area into the market. It is laced with some chemicals we KNOW about, and gawd knows what else.

In fact, there shouldn't be any fishing allowed in the gulf. Whatever fish are able to survive need to stay there and reproduce, or we're going to have an oily gulf with no life at all in it in the future.

Let the surviving fish live! Novel idea. Life getting to live peacefully.

[gvstn]

13. Sanjay Gupta had a segment on this

and the scientific test looked exactly as your picture. Pathetic.

We already have intersex frogs from pharmaceutical runoff http://www.physorg.com/news196345889.html. Maybe Corexit will work the other way? I guess we will just have to take our chances and see. Did BP ever release the chemical formula for Corexit to the FDA or EPA? They were fighting it as a trade secret initially. Without the list of ingredients I don't see how you test for them.

[ensho]

7. how many noses do they have? cause noses need to take a break

fairly often. or are they doing spot checks?

much of the 'checking the seafood for oil and dispersment' business seems odd.

[gvstn]

21. The rule for

Trying perfumes/colognes is no more than 3 to compare. After that you nose is overloaded and not very accurate. When I saw the video of the testing this all I could think about. After 3 fish the sniffer is not very accurate. Very poor system.

But in reality who are we kidding? We know the seafood will be contaminated for years. If we are only allowed one can of deep sea tuna per week there is no way gulf seafood will escape this type of overloaded ecosystem.

[LatteLibertine]

8. I cringed when I heard this too

[RB TexLa]

9. How do you determine what food is bad?

[madrchsod]

10. i`d rather have a dog smell it than a human...

[MineralMan]

11. As long as it's not a wet dog...

They smell bad. :rofl:

[undeterred]

14. I wonder what corexit smells like.

[Skink]

25. see post 2

[deaniac21]

15. Smell for taint???

[nashville_brook]

17. are you fucking kidding me?

the sniff test doesn't pass the sniff test.

[proud2BlibKansan]

19. Apparently this is how they have tested food for years

Sure doesn't smell right to me.

[mike r]

22. A little Febreze goes a long way

[Catherina]

24. Find me a human who can detect cancer or truffles by smell and then we'll talk n/t

[Carni]

28. Great - someone's nose is in my food from the get go?

Not sure what is more unappealing...oil contaminated food, or some stranger's nose hovering over it right out of the gate.

They don't have any more sophisticated methods of testing than this?

[underpants]

29. and it is being done by the industry right?

I heard this on NPR this week and literally laughed outloud

[backscatter712]

32. I was under the impression that this was only the first step of the testing process.

Step one: Smell the seafood - if it smells spoiled or rotten, or smells like nasty chemicals, it's immediately rejected.

If it passes the smell test, then it moves on to step 2: lab testing.

That way they're not spending money on lab tests, when it's completely obvious just from the smell that they wouldn't pass.

[loudsue]

33. Are the BP labs going to be doing the testing?

I haven't read anywhere that the fish is being tested by outside sources before it is sold on the market. This smell test is the only information I've seen on it.

[backscatter712]

34. I hope not. The USDA/FDA labs have enough problems with capture.

BP itself better not be in the seafood testing business...