ALERT: Tuna Linked To Salmonella Outbreak In 20 States

Ive never liked ANY of the spicy tuna or processed sushi dishes they serve at restaurants. S{picy tuna has always appeared to me to be junk hunks of tuna, run through a grinder and then mixed with wasabi mayo. BLACCHHH.

I do not know who the hell ever came up with that kind of ****. Here in the SE sections of Pa, (under the umbrela of Philly culture) sushi restaurants serve a variant called "A PHILLY ROLL" . (This is gonna gag any sushi lover).
Its a mass of ground up tuna and salmon, mixed throughout with Philly CREAM CHEESE!!! and served witndollops of wasabi and fish eggs.
Fuckin thing oughta be served on a bagel with a sice of onion. I bitch every time I see this kinda shiot on a sushi house menu. I think they are trying to appeal to a wider market but instead , I think the wider market candidates should stay the hell home.


Why am I not surprised when you mix mayo with your tuna and then stash it in a bain marie with an open back that this crap wont become infected??

That is hard to learn about - one of my favorites from a japanese restaurant in northern california was 'spicy tuna roll' - only that spicy tuna roll was fantastic. They used very fresh raw tuna (this was in a tuna catching seaport), and none of the crud you're talking about. Ugh to that.

what was in the spicy part?

I don't remember - last ate there seven years ago. That deli was taken over by other folks after I left town.. so I can't check.

but I posted on this before and found a photo and recipe re something similar - though I doubt there was any sriracha in it.
It was relatively simple re ingredients, so I'm guessing Asian chile oil.
http://able2know.org/topic/27403-5#post-4551023

Is 'Tuna Scrape' The 'Pink Slime' Of Sushi?
April 16, 2012
by Nancy Shute - NPR

Spicy tuna roll, or spicy tuna goo?

The fact that there has been a salmonella outbreak among people who eat sushi isn't super surprising; raw seafood does pose more health risks than cooked fish.

But the fact that the fish implicated in the outbreak is something called "tuna scrape" sure got our attention here at The Salt.

According to the Food and Drug Administration's recall notice, tuna scrape is "tuna backmeat, which is specifically scraped off from the bones, and looks like a ground product." In other words, tuna hamburger.

The product, Nakaochi Scrape, was sold frozen to restaurants and supermarkets, which used it to make sushi, particularly spicy tuna rolls. Of the 116 people in 20 states and the District of Columbia who have fallen ill so far, many reported they had eaten spicy tuna rolls. The distributor has recalled 58,828 pounds of the stuff.

Given all the commotion over "pink slime," a derogatory moniker for processed beef trimmings, the notion of frozen tuna goo being used to make sushi is less than appetizing. But is it any more dangerous than regular sushi?

To find out, we called up Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia. He was just about to jet off to a big food safety conference in China.

This was the first he had heard of tuna scrape. But, he added, "There are a lot of things we haven't heard of that the industry is doing."

He said there are two things to consider when thinking about health and ground up fish. The first is the fact that the tuna scrape is served raw. "My rule of thumb is that raw food of animal origin should be cooked before it's eaten."

The second issue is whether grinding the fish creates the potential for more problems. That's been the case with hamburger, because contamination from one carcass can be spread through an entire batch. "For chicken, turkey and beef, the ground product tends to be more contaminated than the whole cuts," Doyle says.

Is that also true for fish? "I don't think enough research has been done on these products," he responds.

There's also a third thing to consider in this case. Just because a food has been frozen doesn't mean it's germ-free.

Freezing is good at killing parasites, Doyle says, but bacteria like E. coli and Salmonella often snooze through a freezing, emerging from their slumber just as dangerous as before. Evidently the Salmonella bareilly that have sickened the people in this current outbreak just love chilling.

So there you have it. Raw fish, not as safe as cooked fish. Ground-up raw fish, who knows?

Given that the fish in the recall was imported, and fish is the No. 1 culprit in outbreaks caused by imported food, maybe it's time to lay off the spicy tuna rolls.

More than three-quarters of seafood consumed in the United States is imported.