People with seafood restaurants have been panicking over the oil spill. Authorities started shrimping season two weeks early in the New Orleans area because of the major oil spill. As would be imagined, the alleged danger posed by the Gulf oil spill to the U.S. food supply is estimated as far worse than previously thought, and could make testing of seafood necessary for decades to come, officials and scientists say.
How will affect your restaurant menu?
So, here is the good news:
Gulf products account for only about 5% of the seafood consumed in the United States.
In two months since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, testing has not found “substantial” quantities of contaminated seafood. Monitoring efforts by the government and the seafood industry make the possibility of significant levels of toxic contamination “extremely unlikely … in anything that gets to market.” Testing includes daily laboratory samples and the use of so-called “sniffers” — people trained to detect the presence of oil in seafood by using their noses. Read more from the original article here: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-05-18-oil-spill_N.htm
The other piece of good news comes from hindsight. Remember Hurricane Katrina? Initial, breathless news reports the day after the storm made a glancing blow at New Orleans speculated that
- 100,000 people would be dead.
- The city of New Orleans had been destroyed
- The toxic soup of chemicals and debris would render the region uninhabitable for at least a decade.
- All wildlife and sea life had been contaminated or destroyed.
As it turned out, the city was re-inhabited and celebrating Mardi Gras within 8 months of the disaster. And the fishing has been excellent for quite some time. No, none of the doomsday scenarios played out. And they will not do so here.
Keep seafood on your menu.