Fish and Parasites

Beef..It's what's for dinner..especially after this thread!

Makes me glad I've been a well done kinda person my whole life.

Mee too Roy.

btw, there's reasons certain religions forbid shellfish and have slaughter standards such as Koasher/ Kasher and Halal. you guys have pretty much hit on the reasons why.

OMG! i think this must be the big one, I've been eating rockfish, lingcod and store bot chicken and beef. how did i ever make this far. Ur killing me.

  hey, don't sweat it, modern medicine has great cures for most of those problems.......

what? you dont trust the FDA

oooooohhh---me too me too for turkey!!!   Last 3 deer I've killed have been with the recurve or longbow, with homemade cedar arrows.  Have'nt hunted since we started buying bison, but wild turkey-----yum!!!

I'll PM you in a bit after I get the kiddos off to bed.

Oh and I absolutely will not touch shellfish.  I was the only one at the crab tourney that didn't eat crab lol.  The ex gf sure enjoyed it though.

I do eat plenty of store bought chicken, and yep, tubes of hamburger too, I just prefer bison - tastes better with lower fat and better cholesterol.

what? you dont trust the FDA

never, ever, trust your health to your goverment

I was told by an old-timer that if you gut the fish before they die, you by-pass the worm issue...he swore by it...
To me, the worms look like they are burrowed into the tissue of the muscle, not the guts...
Any thoughts??

I was told by an old-timer that if you gut the fish before they die, you bypass the worm issue...he swore by it...
To me, the worms look like they are burrowed into the tissue of the muscle, not the guts...
Any thoughts??

Mostly true from what I know. The worms live in the guts and when the fish dies the defences are down and the worms start making their way into the flesh. When filleting FAS cod vs shore processed fish we find 10 - 40 times more worms in the shore processed fish.

The other factor is that the fish closer to shore will also have a larger number of parasites.

I find very few worms in fish I catch off the coast. Holding the fillet to a light source makes it easy to see them and pick them out if there are any.

For those of you concerned about the origins of meat served in restaurants, you need to come to Portland to dine - the wait staff here are used to handling those concerns:

Organic....duh!  The damn chicken is not made of plastic. 

What are parasites?

Animal parasites live in or on other animals from which they obtain at least some of their vital requirements, particularly nourishment. In general each kind of parasite confines itself to one kind of animal or group of animals, known as the host. Some parasites need more than one host at different stages in their development, the adult parasite living off one animal and the young or larval forms living off other animals.

Some fish parasites live on the outside of fish, others within the body; most are removed during gutting and washing. The kinds most frequently met with during subsequent handling and distribution are worms.

Round worms, or nematodes, in larval form are found in the guts and in the flesh of many fish marketed in the United Kingdom; two kinds predominate, the 'cod worm' and the 'herring worm'.

The 'cod worm', which is often found in cod, is also found in many other species. Its scientific name is Phocanema decipiens; other outdated scientific names are Porrocaecum decipiens or Terranova decipiens. It grows up to 4 cm long in fish, and varies in colour from creamy white to dark brown. It is frequently found in the flesh of fish, particularly in the belly flaps, where it often remains for long periods curled up and encased in a sac-like membrane produced by the fish tissue.

The 'herring worm' is often found in herring, mackerel, whiting and blue whiting, but it also occurs in many other species. Its scientific name is Anisakis simplex. It grows up to 2 cm long in fish, is almost colourless, and is found tightly coiled and encased in the guts and flesh, sometimes in considerable numbers, particularly in the belly flaps. Anisakis can migrate from guts to flesh in fish left ungutted after capture (yikes!) , notably in herring, mackerel and blue whiting.

How do round worms get into fish?

The life history of a parasitic round worm is complex. The adult lives in the stomach of a marine mammal, Phocanema in the grey seal and Anisakis mainly in dolphins, porpoises and whales. Eggs of the parasite pass into the sea with the mammal's excreta, and when the eggs hatch the microscopic larvae must invade a new host in order to develop. The larval worms of Anisakis are eaten by a small shrimplike crustacean, a euphausiid; the first host of Phocanema is a small isopod crustacean that lives on the sea bed.

When crustaceans infested with Anisakis or Phocanema are eaten by a fish the larval worms are released into its stomach. They then bore through the stomach wall and eventually become encased in the guts or in the flesh of the host fish. The life cycle of the parasite is completed when an infested fish is eaten by a suitable marine mammal.

Large fish tend to be more heavily infested by round worms than small fish of the same species. This is because large fish eat more, and therefore ingest greater numbers of parasites, and also because the larval worms, although inactive, can survive for a long time in fish, and therefore their numbers accumulate as the fish grows older.

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/tan/x5951e/x5951e01.htm

It is frequently found in the flesh of fish, particularly in the belly flaps, where it often remains for long periods curled up and encased in a sac-like membrane produced by the fish tissue.

http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/tan/x5951e/x5951e01.htm

I have never seen a "sac-like membrane" around worms in cod ... usually just coiled up or sometimes not coiled. This is just my opservations from cutting a couple hundred thousand pounds of cod. Your results may vary.

Yup, I recently saw an episode of "monsters inside me", the govt studies of pacific rockfish found that over 70% of all species caught had the bad parasite present in the meat. Just be sure to cook the fish well and the worms taste great!
 You can also entice the worms to leave the meat by covering the fillet with lemon/lime juice and let it sit out for 1/2 hour before cooking, they stand right up out of the meat and give you a dirty look!

*google image search for cod worms*
*quits eating fish*

Colin the Lincoln City Lingcod should be the sequel.