Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) - Retail

Whitefish Buyer's Guide - Safety, Quality, & Purity

Safety, Quality & Purity

Safety
All Alaska whitefish are processed in plants that are in full compliance with food safety regulations and practices, such as HACCP (Hazard Analysis / Critical Control Point) and SSOP (Standard Sanitary Operating Procedures). HACCP addresses the safety of the products, and requires monitoring of control points to ensure that food hazards do Candling whitefish for quality control not arise. HACCP, required by federal law, is overseen by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) and the State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC).

Product Quality
The quality of the products is assured by each company’s standard practices in accordance with the specifications of their customers. The producers and the customers work together to ensure the highest quality in the products. Many customers conduct their own inspections and audits of their suppliers. This practice is routine in the industry and includes a focus on the traceability of all products. The interested reader is invited to examine ASMI’s Premium Quality Specifications for Whitefish Fillets for basic quality information.

A large portion of the Alaska pollock harvest is made into surimi. The quality of surimi is judged mostly on the basis of its gel strength, impurities, and color. High-quality surimi has high gel strength, low impurities (bits of skin or viscera), and white color. There are many standard grades of surimi —

first grade: SA, FA, A, and AA; produced from butterfly skin-on or skinless fillets
second grade: KA, and KB; produced from meat recovered after a second refining step
third grade: RA, and B; produced from meat recovered after second-grade refining, might include meat recovered from collar cuts and frames (skeletons)

Each manufacturer sets its own target values for gel strength, elasticity, color, and water-binding ability.

All Alaska whitefish are high in protein and low in fat. They are excellent sources of nutrition.

Purity
Alaska is thousands of miles away from large sources of pollution that can contaminate the human food supply in other

parts of the world. These distances combined with the earth’s patterns of circulation of water and air help to ensure that Alaska’s waters are among the cleanest in the world.

Alaska’s human population density is the lowest in the U.S. and lower than most places in the world. Alaska has little heavy industry, and strict regulations governing development activities, such as road Bear Glacier, Alaska building, mining, logging, and sewage treatment. The State of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation (ADEC) has a regulatory section dealing specifically with water quality. Water discharges such as sewage and other potential pollutants, are closely regulated to ensure high water quality. In addition, Alaska’s Department of Fish & Game (ADFG) requires prior approval for any in-stream construction activities. Clean marine habitats produce pure seafood products.

A good way to judge the cleanliness of a body of water is to examine the sessile (non-moving) organisms that live there. Since 1986, the U.S. National Mussel Watch Project of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Status and Trends (NS&T) Program has been doing exactly that. The program is growing, and there are well over 250 sampling sites throughout the coastal United States. Every two years, either mussels or oysters are tested for the presence of 44 different kinds of petroleum hydrocarbons and other pollutants, such as metals, pesticides, and PCBs. The Alaska sites, including two in Prince William Sound, all ranked among the 25 sites with the least petroleum contamination in the USA. Concentrations of petroleum hydrocarbons, PCBs, or pesticides at Alaska sites are not considered high.

Years ago, worldwide concern forced a ban on certain organic chemicals, such as DDT (a pesticide) and PCBs (a class of industrial chemicals). Before and since those bans took effect, DDT and PCB were found at levels of concern in many marine organisms around the world, but not in Alaska seafood. Many studies, conducted by both government and university scientists over the course of decades, have repeatedly demonstrated that Alaska seafood is pure and clean, with little to no traces of contaminants.

Contaminant levels that constitute a public health concern, as determined by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), have never been approached. Alaska seafood is routinely purer than products from other parts of the world.

The Cook Inlet region of southcentral Alaska is the populated part of the state, and serves to illustrate the purity of the Alaska environment. Studies performed for the U.S. Minerals Management Service report that Cook Inlet’s waters and sediments are remarkably free of hydrocarbons and metals. One of the research teams, University of Alaska’s Environmental & Natural Resources Institute, said “The physical, chemical, and bioassay results of this study show that Cook Inlet has very low environmental concentrations of hydrocarbons, and that sediments and water are generally free from toxicity. Results also show no immediate evidence of heavy metal pollution in Cook Inlet.”

As the marine habitat in Cook Inlet is extremely clean, so is the marine habitat in all Alaska waters, and so is Alaska’s seafood, including whitefish. Like most regions of Alaska, Cook Inlet is home to Alaska Natives and others whose lifestyle is based on harvest and consumption of local foods, especially finfish and shellfish, at levels higher than those consumed by other Americans. In order to assess the possible risks of a subsistence diet based heavily on seafood, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted a comprehensive study of Cook Inlet seafood species. King salmon, sockeye salmon, chum salmon, halibut, sea bass, cod, flounder, as well as other subsistence food species, such as kelp, snails, and clams, were studied. The results indicate that finfish and shellfish in Cook Inlet are as clean and wholesome as any that the EPA has ever tested.

This conclusion was supported by the State of Alaska’s Division of Public Health. Their own independent study of traditional (Native) foods, conducted for the entire state, recommended “the continued unrestricted consumption of traditional subsistence foods in Alaska.” In a statement endorsed by the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, Alaska Department of Health and Social Services, Alaska Native Health Board, Alaska Native Science Commission, Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, Inc., Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies, University of Alaska Anchorage, North Slope Borough, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation, the Alaska Division of Public Health “continues to strongly recommend that all Alaskans, including pregnant women, women who are breast feeding, women of childbearing age, and young children continue unrestricted consumption of fish from Alaskan waters.”

ADEC also tests the cleanliness of Alaska seafood. ADEC tested a variety of species including salmon, pollock, cod, sablefish, halibut, king crab, and snow crab. The results showed that none of these species approached FDA’s levels of concern for mercury, arsenic, chromium, cadmium, lead, and nickel. In addition, ADEC routinely checks both raw and processed seafood products for bacterial contaminants such as Listeria, Salmonella, Staphylococcus aureus, and fecal coliforms, and consistently finds these bacteria are virtually non-existent in Alaska seafood.

Alaska’s marine habitats are extremely clean, and Alaska’s seafood is remarkably free of contamination by pesticides, petroleum derivatives, PCBs, metals, and bacteria.