Eating dead shellfish..?

[Nagual]

This may sound a little daft, but myself and bivibabe have been scratching our heads over this one.

In nearly all foraging books, fish books etc etc. it says not to eat any shellfish that were not alive before cooking. However, go to any fish shop and you can buy scallops, quite clearly dead as they aren't in their shells.


So, basically whats the score here? Do scallops have some sort of exemption from whatever affects other shellfish? Have they had their shellfish version of their 3 in 1 jags?



Cheers,

 

[The Joker]

I think the reason for not eating dead shellfish is ya just don't know how long its been dead for, where as shellfish at the fish shop will have been alive when they removed them from the shell so knowing how long they will last.

 

[fishfosh]

I saw on an episode of Bear Grylls that he collected some crabs (freshwater, I think) and purposely kept them alive right until he boiled them. He said something along the lines of there being bacteria already present on shellfish, etc that would be present during the decay (if I remember correctly). Not sure how reliable that information is.

The scallops you would see in shops would be frozen/kept cold - vastly slowing down (but not killing) bacteria on them.

Not sure if this really answers your question - or if it's correct!

 

[andy r]

The dead shellfishin the fish shop will have been kept in a cold climate since it was caught, the stuff washed up on the beach may be 6 days dead and been hot and cold - day/night or tide in/tide out so will be crammed with bacteria !

 

[Bushwhacker]

I think the reason for not eating dead shellfish is ya just don't know how long its been dead for, where as shellfish at the fish shop will have been alive when they removed them from the shell so knowing how long they will last.

^That^

They're put on ice straight after live capture/processing.
If you picked up a dead 'un from the beach it could've been baking in the sun for a couple of days.
The smell test can always help too - if it smells fishy, it's off.

 

[locum76]

The smell test can always help too - if it smells fishy, it's off.

hmmm, thats not a reliable test. pathogens tend not to smell of anything.

 

[Martyn]

It aint the fact that they're dead, it's knowing what killed em.

 

[wicca]

Another aspect worth giving some thought to perhaps, is not only how long has it been dead but what killed it? I suppose you might get an indication that something's amiss by the number of dead shell fish in the immediate area.

(Beat me to the draw Martyn.. )

 

[Kerne]

Stuff in the fish shop is often cooked, frozen and then warmed up. Pretty dead by the time you eat it but probably OK. Stuff on the beach? Rather you than me...