Dar seafood ppp standard

Finfish

For the purposes of this assessment, finfish includes bony, vertebrate fish and cartilaginous fish such as sharks and rays.

Finfish have been implicated in many outbreaks of food-borne illness in Australia in the period 1995 to June 2002 (Appendix 1). The hazards have mainly been ciguatoxin, histamine or escolar wax esters. Pathogens implicated include Salmonella spp., Norwalk-like virus and C. perfringens (in a reef and beef dish). In the case of the outbreak of perfringens food poisoning, the likely source of contamination is the beef, as C. perfringens is a common surface contaminant of beef carcasses at slaughter but is not usually considered a seafood-associated pathogen [3].
Many of the outbreaks of ciguatera that occur in Australia are a result of amateur anglers catching fish from affected reefs, but a significant proportion occur in private residences from consumption of fish (whole or fillets) purchased from commercial suppliers (Appendix 2). The outbreaks due to histamine (scombroid) fish poisoning were primarily consumed in a restaurant setting (Appendix 2), implying a failure in the cold chain. Similarly, escolar wax ester illness was mainly reported from a restaurant setting (Appendix 2).
For histamine and escolar wax esters, the mildness of the illness compared to ciguatera probably leads to significant under-reporting of cases that are due to consumption in the home setting.
The failures recorded for imported finfish in the Imported Foods Inspection Program testing data for the period January 1998 to June 2003 (inclusive) are listed in Table 1.6. Of note are the high degree of failure for L. monocytogenes and histamine in processed products.