Seafood: Fulfilling Market Demands

Seafood is tasty, healthy, and a good source of fat, proteins and minerals. The welfare of the fish, which influences its quality, is of concern to consumers and farmers of seafoods, who are seeking to minimize the use of drugs and the infliction of stress. Processors of seafoods also need to develop new products, technologies, packaging materials and ways of thinking, to fulfill legislative and market demands for fresh, easy to prepare, safe food products, with consistent quality and price. Unfortunately, these new processes render the original species unidentifiable by eye in the final product, which opens the way for substitution of expensive species by cheaper ones of similar characteristics. New challenges to the consumer emerge from the use of molecular biology techniques for the production of novel species, and improvements in technologies for embryonic development. Molecular biology techniques, fortunately, will also help to identify the origin of these species. Our advice: read the label. and eat seafoods!