Advanced seafood safety and quality techniques give producers valuable assessments in seconds – not days

Yiming Feng is developing a non-destructive seafood analysis tool to detect critical safety and quality information. These strategies can significantly reduce processing delays and spoilage risk, improving the competitiveness of Virginia's seafood economy in national markets.

 By Julie Shlisky

Many health advantages are associated with eating seafood, which is rich in lean protein, omega-3 fatty acids and other nutrients. Seafood consumption in the United States has been increasing for decades. As one of the largest seafood producers in the nation, Virginia has an estimated $1.1 billion seafood industry.

The composition of seafood and the environment from which it is harvested make it highly perishable. Proper handling, storage, and cooking are crucial to maintain food quality and safety. 

Yet seafood supply chains have long faced challenges in quality and safety monitoring during harvesting, processing, transportation, and retailing. Methods for detecting key safety parameters typically require laboratory testing that can take 24-48 hours, causing delays and increasing spoilage risk.

Assistant Professor Yiming Feng’s Hatch Project at the Virginia Seafood Agricultural Research and Extension Center is developing a hyperspectral imaging system that can detect critical safety and quality parameters in seconds rather than days. This advanced sensing and imaging technique monitors histamine levels, an indicator of spoilage, and bacterial counts in seafood.

“Reducing testing time from days to seconds would give seafood processors access to real-time product safety and quality information about their supply chain,” Feng said.

The benefits could be far-reaching.

“There is a potential to transform subjective quality assessments and delayed safety testing into automated, objective measurements in a fraction of the time,” he added.

This technology offers advantages to multiple stakeholders in the industry. Seafood producers would gain access to premium markets that require the highest levels of quality control with a reduction in product losses. Likewise, safety regulators and inspectors — who contend with frequent seafood recalls — will value better tools to comply with FDA safety requirements. 

If customers encounter more consistent food safety and quality assurances and better protection from histamine poisoning and bacterial contamination, improved trust and market demand would prime the industry for growth.

Feng and his team are developing and validating the hyperspectral imaging technology for quality and safety detection, with hopes it could serve widely as a complementary rapid method to probe food safety. The project has also catalyzed the development of an intelligent seafood processing automation system that would integrate this real-time detection with robotic sorting, grading, and packaging. These scalable solutions could eventually expand to include oysters, blue crabs, and other commercial fish, benefitting an array of Virginia's seafood processors.