Department of Agriculture says Gulf seafood is safe

300 whole samples tested? Wow! That's a pretty extensive test for an area that covers thousands of square miles. Were they all tested in the same area, or was one whole fish sampled from each of 300 different areas?

Ridiculous!

The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services continued testing shows Gulf seafood is safe to eat, which is music to the ears of local seafood providers.

“It helps immensely,” Pete Blaylock, owner of Blaylock Seafood and Specialty Market told The Log Monday. “What I try and tell people is that our Gulf seafood is tested more now than it has been in the past 20 years.

Since last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Department of Agriculture has screened hundreds of seafood samples from the Gulf of Mexico and found that Florida’s seafood hasn’t been affected by the spill.

Between August 2010 and June 2011, the department’s division of food safety tested nearly 300 seafood samples, ranging from fish, shrimp and oysters to crabs, lobsters and clams for possible contamination.

All of the samples were found to be “well below” the Food and Drug Administrations level of concern, according to a press release from the Department of Agriculture. Nearly half the samples were also tested for a component of Corexit, the dispersant dioctyl sulfosuccinate, which also came back “well below” the level of concern.

Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam has called this latest round of testing “aggressive.” Earlier this year he urged consumers “to put Florida seafood back on their plates and back into their diet.”

Restaurateur Dewey Destin said continued “vigorous testing” goes a long way to reassure people that local seafood is safe.

“It’s very important; otherwise people might be afraid to eat Gulf seafood,” said Destin.

The Department of Agriculture will continue to test Florida’s seafood over the next three years, as part of a $10 million funding agreement with BP and the state. The funds will be used to “enhance” laboratory capabilities to conduct further testing in an effort to “further restore public confidence” in Gulf seafood, the release states.

While concerns over the quality of local seafood might have died down since the oil spill, Destin said people are definitely “thinking about it.”

“You can’t blame them; they want to make sure it’s safe.”