Dar seafood ppp standard

Appendix 5

Pearl oyster meat and offshore scallops

Background: Requirements for producers of bivalve molluscs

The draft Standard in the Draft Assessment Report for Proposal P265 (Development of a Primary Production and Processing Standard for Seafood) included a definition for ‘bivalve molluscs’ which specifically excluded ‘spat, scallops and pearl oysters where the only part of the product consumed is the adductor muscle’.

The implication of this definition was that producers of roe-off scallops and pearl oyster meat (spat are juvenile molluscs andare not normally eaten) were excluded from having to comply with Division 3 of the Standard, while producers of all other bivalves were required to meet those requirements.
Several submissions to FSANZ did not support excluding pearl meat producers from having to comply with the Division 3 requirements of the draft Standard, and two sought confirmation that there was sufficient scientific justification for the exclusion. Two submissions supported the exclusion.
In addition, the potentially onerous effect of the requirement for classification of harvest waters under Division 3 of the draft Standard on the wild oyster and offshore scallop industries was raised in submissions and in consultations. It is understood that the roe-on component is a small but expanding portion of the offshore scallop industry. The Division 3 requirement would not apply to the roe-off component of the industry.
The supply of pearl oyster meat is likely to increase in future years, as the feasibility of pearl oyster aquaculture in estuarine environments is being investigated in Australia. In NSW, for example, a small industry is being developed in Port Stephens and other estuaries.
If estuarine pearl producers were wishing to market pearl oyster meat as a by-product, the food safety implications would need to be separately considered, as the range of associated food safety hazards might be different. The producers have been advised by the NSW Food Authority that any pearl meat marketed would have to be produced under the requirements of the NSW Shellfish Program.
Consideration is also being given to use of pearl oyster aquaculture as a means of bioremediation of polluted waterways (Gifford et al., 2004), although it must be assumed that the meat would not be marketed from these animals. It should be noted, however, that the considerations below apply only to pearl oyster meat from offshore, remote locations
The global public health and economic impacts of algal biotoxins, the likelihood of those impacts increasing in scale as aquaculture expands, and the vulnerability of the Australian shellfish industry were highlighted in a recent report to the Australian Shellfish Quality Assurance Advisory Committee (Cawthron Institute, 2001).