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Wisconsin lab will help test Gulf seafood

The food safety lab at the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) is one of four state-run labs which will be utilized to test the safety of seafood from the Gulf of Mexico. The lab will primarily test shrimp and oysters for petroleum and petroleum byproducts. The DATCP lab has experience in testing seafood from the Great Lakes and is part of the federal Food Emergency Response Network. It will receive about $250,000 worth of scientific equipment to conduct the tests, lab director Steve Sobek expects to have the additional equipment in place and testing to begin by the end of July.

The Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are working together to assure that seafood taken from the Gulf is free of contamination from the oil spill. The first part of the testing will be to take baseline samples to see what is normal. Then, as fisheries closed by the oil slick are cleansed, seafood from those areas will be tested for safety before reopening the areas to fishing.

The other three state labs testing Gulf seafood are in Arizona, California and Florida. Four federal laboratories will also be involved.