La. seafood safety testing results now available online

Louisiana officials want to wipe out the stereotype of tainted shrimp, crab and fish dirtied by oil and chemicals from last year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. To that end, they’re putting reams of data and test results on a new website they hope will prove to restaurants and consumers the state’s abundant seafood species are safe for consumption. The website can be found at gulfsource.org. It shows data collected by the Louisiana departments of Wildlife and Fisheries, Environmental Quality, Health and Hospitals, and Agriculture and Forestry. Wildlife and Fisheries Secretary Robert Barham says of more than 2,100 samples taken during the last year, no sample of seafood, water or sediment has tested near the federally established “level of concern.” An $18 million grant to the state from BP, made in the aftermath of the oil spill, has funded the testing.