Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 21, 1992 TAG: 9203210086
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Sandra Brown Kelly
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They never say that they are required by law, at least in Virginia, to belong to the FDIC and that any solicitation for deposits has to include the fact.
Or like recent advertising for VISA credit card television ad that promised customers that if their card were stolen, they'd be responsible for only up to $50 in fraudulent charges to the card.
That's also law.
Seafood inspection is not quite the same. There is no mandatory inspection. Although inspectors check restaurants in which it's served, no one watches the seafood business that supplies us at home.
Except the people who handle it.
But Kroger's promotion takes it a bit further. The sign also says:"Who else but Kroger would go this far?"
Well, Food Lion and Winn-Dixie and Harris Teeter . . . .
Many grocery chains pay as much as 10 cents a pound more for their seafood to have it checked by a Department of Commerce inspector.
Kroger has participated in the federal inspection program for at least three years, said Roy Oliver, merchandising manager for the company's division that serves our area.
The signs just may be more noticeable now because of recent publicity about contaminated seafood.
Consumer Reports magazine's February cover featured a picture of netted fish and the headline asked: Is our fish fit to eat?
The article inside claimed that nearly half the fish that the magazine's staffers bought in the Chicago and New York City areas and tested and, in a six-month investigation, were found to be contaminated by bacteria from human or animal feces. Some types of fish had PCBs and mercury.
Consumer Reports gave statistics from the Center for Disease Control that said, from 1978 to 1987, fish and shellfish caused 3.6 percent of all reported cases of food-borne illness and 10.5 percent of all outbreaks, which is when two or more people get sick from the same apparent cause at the same time.
Like most people, I don't think a lot about what is in my seafood, only that I have a wedge of lemon to go on it.
I treat seafood like I do milk; I smell it, and if it doesn't suit my nose, I don't ingest it.
If it stinks it's bad. If it's good, I assume that cooking will kill most of the unsavories. The exception, according to the Consumer Reports, is with red-muscled fish, such as tuna, where toxins that can cause histamine poisoning in some of us aren't destroyed by heat.
Stories like the one in Consumer Reports hurt, said Oliver. He said people don't relate a salmon steak to a ribeye. Neither do they relate the $4.50 salmon steak they can cook at home to the $15 meal of salmon they order in a restaurant.
No grocery that intends to stay competitive wants to sell bad seafood, but the monitoring procedures can be complicated. For instance, there are 42 fresh seafood counters in the 114 stores in Oliver's division. That's a lot of potential for customer dissatisfaction.
To protect themselves and shoppers, many grocery stores and processing plants agree to voluntary federal inspection.
They can opt for one of three programs or designations:
Lot inspection means inspectors follow the guidelines of the company paying for the inspection and spot-check the order at the processing plant.
Packed Under Federal Inspection means the seafood products have been processed in the presence of federal inspectors in federally approved plants.
U.S. Grade means the fish meets certain quality standards set by the government.
Many grocery chains refuse to buy from processors that don't have an inspector on the premises.
Robert Edmonds, manager of Sam Rust Seafood Co. in Hampton, said that when a retailer wants federal inspection, his wholesale company hires the inspector to check an order - Kroger's, for example - but the cost is passed on to the retailer.
Edmonds, a third-generation seafood wholesaler, said Sam Rust began using a federal inspector at the insistence of Kroger. But, he said, he supports a stricter seafood inspection program systemwide.
"There are a lot of processing plants I wouldn't eat fish out of," he said.
The seafood business, like others, has been affected by the recent recession, say wholesalers and retailers. Seafood sales have been about level, or maybe down a little, since they hit a high about 1989, said Edmonds.
The industry also is changing. It is having problems with getting supplies of certain varieties, such as flounder. It is getting more and more of its product from aquaculture farms instead of the ocean.
Aqua-farming has catapulted catfish into a best seller, for instance, and brought obscure varieties like talapia to the average American. Tilapi looks like a skinless perch. It also is called St. Peter's fish, because it supposedly was the variety used by Jesus to feed the multitudes.
The proportion of seafood sold frozen rather than fresh also is growing, said Edmonds. There are several reasons for that.
Flounder caught when prices are low can be frozen and kept by suppliers to sell when prices are better. Some fish is frozen because that's the safest, most economical, way to get it to market.
Kroger's Oliver laughed about the answer he got in a Parkersburg, W.Va., restaurant when he asked if the orange roughy was "fresh."
"Oh, yes sir," he was told. Oliver said he doubted the fish got to West Virginia from New Zealand without being frozen.
Freezing fish also is more efficient for a store because there is more shrinkage - a retailer's word for loss - in fresh seafood than in other meats, Oliver said.
He said seafood has a five- to six-day shelf life after it's received at a store. That's assuming it gets to the store within 48 to 72 hours after it is caught.
The experts say there's no magic to identifying fresh seafood, either. When Edmonds and his staff look at a boatload of fish, they use the same guides any shopper can:
First, smell it. Then, experts suggest:
Look at the gills. The redder the gills, the fresher the fish. Check the flesh: the firmer, the better. And finally, look the fish in the eye and buy if the eye is clear, not cloudy.
Last week was a fitting time to talk seafood because the annual seafood show was taking place in Boston. The topics would be serious, and the eating would be divine, Oliver recalled.
But then, Oliver and Edmonds don't just sell seafood. They also eat it. Oliver said he enjoys North Atlantic whitefish; Edmonds is partial to the "semi-fishy" tautog.
Sandra Brown Kelly covers retailing and consumer-related issues for the Roanoke Times & World-News.
by CNB