Survey on Toxicity and Label of Dried Dressed Fish Fillet in 1998
SHIN-JUNG LIN 1, CHAU-JAN LIAO 2, SHU-KONG CHEN 3 AND DENG-FWU HWANG 2*
1.Department of Food Health, Deh Yu College of Nursing and Management, Keelung, Taiwan
2.Department of Food Science, National Taiwan Ocean University, 2 Pei-Ning Road, Keelung, Taiwan
3.Institute of Food Hygiene, Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taipei, Taiwan
(Received: July 26, 2001; Accepted: December 14, 2001)
ABSTRACT
Recently, dried dressed fish fillets have been reported as a cause of food poisoning. Hence, 364 samples of 58 packages of these products were collected from 9 counties; Keelung, Taipei, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Ilan, Taitung and Penghu in 1998 and their toxicities and labels were investigated. It was found that over 65% of products had no label listing the product name, manufacturing date, manufacturer, or food additives. Based on the detecting limit of 5 mouse units per gram (MU/g), the frequency of toxicity occurrence in the samples collected from Taiwan markets was 1.1%. The highest toxicity was 15 MU/g. The toxin obtained from toxic samples was partially purified by ultrafiltration and Bio-Gel P-2 column chromatography. Results of analyses by thin-layer chromatography, electrophoresis and high performance liquid chromatography showed that the toxin was composed of tetrodotoxin and anhydrotetrodotoxin.
Keywords: dried dressed fish fillets, toxicity, tetrodotoxin, anhydrotetrodotoxin