One of Scotland’s biggest fish producers, Marine Harvest, believes the fish could have been tainted by white spirit on the way to the company’s processing plant at Mallaig, on the west coast. The company has started fresh probe on the vessel used to transport the live fish from a farm. It is informed that Morrisons has pulled the product from its fresh-fish counters and pre-packed chillers and urged customers to return any salmon and smoked salmon products with use-by dates of February 10-13.
Marine Harvest refused to comment on the taint, which causes a chemical taste to the flesh of the fish, could also affect salmon supplied to other retailers. An alert has been issued by the Food Standards Agency (FSA) giving details of affected products, which include popular ranges such as Morrisons Scottish salmon fillet, fillets with parsley, with lime and coriander, in cranberry and orange-flavour glaze and lightly smoked salmon fillet with tomato and chorizo melt.
According to an FSA spokesman Morrisons had informed the agency about the incident after receiving around 50 customer complaints. He added that there is no sufficient quantitative information to conduct a formal risk assessment. He also opined that the chemicals implicated in the problem are present at low levels which are very unlikely to be an acute risk to health and this therefore appears to be a problem of taint, which is a quality rather than a safety matter.
Morrisons informed that all the affected products has been removed from sale and product-recall notices has been issued. Marine Harvest has notified all their customers of the situation and said that they are investigating the cause of this taint, which they believe is present in a small number of their harvested fish.
