Origin labels can raise questions about food safety

If our own country, with its many safety regulations, can still end up with salmonella in peanuts or E coli in spinach, why do we trust our food to a country where there are a lot fewer laws?

For more information, I went to Ty Frederickson, who has been buying Alaskan seafood for Gastronomy's Market Street restaurants and fish markets for the past 30 years. He also teaches classes on buying and cooking seafood.

"What happens is, they over-caught, they have too much fish, and they can't sell all of it. So the excess is frozen and shipped over to China, where the labor is cheap," he explained.

In China, factory workers remove skin and bones, cut the fish into portions, etc., and then it's refrozen and sent back to the United States.

Frederickson said he won't buy salmon that's been processed in China, even though it can be $5 per pound cheaper than salmon coming directly from Alaska.

"I do buy some frozen wild salmon, but it's been frozen correctly, and I don't buy anything that's left the United States. Just because it's wild doesn't necessarily mean it's good."

Gastronomy's farmed salmon comes from Canada, because Frederickson doesn't like buying fish flown from Chile to Miami and then to Seattle. He does buy shrimp from Contessa, an American company that has a farm in Vietnam. However, he won't buy frozen scallops from China or crab from Russia.

He sticks with distributors that he knows and trusts.

Likewise, he advises consumers to get to know the people working behind the fish counter.

"Ask where it was caught and where it was processed. It should be the same place," he added.

Another bothersome issue with COOL labels: fish, meat and poultry that have been cooked, breaded, sauced, etc., are exempt. So you have no way of knowing where those fish sticks or frozen dinners were processed.

Country-of-origin labels are a start in helping us figure out where food comes from. But they raise a lot more questions than they answer.

E-mail: vphillips@desnews.com