Food Standards Agency Issues Call for Research on Removing Norovirus from Oysters
The UK's Food Standards Agency (FSA) today issued a call for proposals to design and execute a research study to identify and evaluate possible enhancements to norovirus removal from live oysters during shellfish depuration. A purification process used commercially and regulated by the FSA, depuration involves placing shellfish in tanks of clean re-circulating seawater, treating them with UV irradiation, and allowing to purge their contaminants over several days.
FSA officials noted that although norovirus contamination can be an issue for a range of foods, norovirus in oysters can present a particular risk to consumer safety as oysters are generally consumed as a raw product, so the virus is not destroyed before consumption by heat processes such as cooking.