Eats

The nose knows

by Mary Tutwiler

When it comes to testing seafood for the taint of oil, there's no better probe than that Gallic proboscis in the center of your face. When it comes to testing seafood for the taint of oil, there's no better probe than that Gallic proboscis in the center of your face.So fine tuned is the human sense of smell that NOAA, in conjunction with the International Food Protection Training Institute, is training a team of inspectors to sniff a whiff of petroleum as the day's catch comes into seafood docks across the gulf. Over 100 inspectors will be fanning out across Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana to help insure that the seafood that reaches U.S. markets is free of oil.

However even without dockside inspectors, fishermen are unlikely to send tainted gulf seafood to market.

"You're going to smell it, you're going to see it. It would be almost impossible for it to make it to market," Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board told the Associated Press.