You’re welcome. I’ve found the common solution to two great issues facing us today. The high price of gasoline and the question of gulf seafood safety could be answered coincidently if you put fish or shrimp in your gas tank and the car runs!

The low idle of your engine with the faint smell of an Aussie barbeque from the tailpipe would answer any question whether gulf seafood is safe to eat.

Before April 20th, I could have never fathomed a fathoms-deep gusher. It made me immediately wonder if I’d ever eat another crawfish. I’d have nightmares of having to explain to children what a blue crab was and why they were so good.

Nightmares seem so real, they remain with you. But the inflated images are impeached in the light of day. They’re just not real. It didn’t really happen, but you feel like it did, like you saw it on TV.

I watched the brown cloud cover my beloved shrimp, crabs, fish and seafood for 100 days this summer. The visions remain in my head that seafood must be tainted forever because of this disaster.

But, nothing has shown this to be true. Louisiana continues to open more areas to finfish, and will allow shrimp harvesting when the season begins in mid August. The State of Louisiana has been testing fish tissue samples since May and has found no public health threat.

FDA Commissioner Dr. Margaret Hamburg said the government is "confident all appropriate steps have been taken to ensure that seafood harvested from the waters being opened is safe and that Gulf seafood lovers everywhere can be confident eating and enjoying the fish and shrimp that will be coming out of this area."

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is calling on BP to fund a seafood testing and certification program over the next 20 years. "This will be the most monitored, safest seafood you will get anywhere in the world," Jindal said.

The best seafood test for government inspectors, as well as for you, is smell. Fish, mollusks, crustaceans should have a clean salty smell, like the ocean. Seafood exposed to oil will smell like petroleum. Petroleum smell is not subtle.

A chef friend recently told me of a customer who returned his fish entrée because it “smelled like oil”. His fresh-water catfish was farm-raised in North Carolina. Here-in lies the problem, hysteria and mistaken beliefs.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, is the believed cancer causing agent in oil. It’s also found in many foods, such as corn oil, kale and smoked meats.

In studying the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, Federal Scientists found that the method in which Alaskan villagers were smoking fish created PAH levels hundreds of times higher than shellfish directly tainted by oil. They also point to the fact that unlike Mercury, the most common cancer-causing compounds in oil are quickly metabolized and eliminated in the bodies of finfish and some crustaceans.

It’s easy to be irrational. Mark Twain said, “I’ve had many problems in my life, most of which never happened”. While more people die in car crashes, fear of flying is most prevalent. Eating a fish from Louisiana won’t be what kills you. There are dozens of inherent carcinogenic elements to our urban lives that we ignore. Oily fish on TV is easy to get upset about, even if it never happens.

The challenge approaching us quickly is not the safety of gulf seafood, but the supply. Louisiana fishermen remain uncertain about the safety of their own seafood as long as more lucrative BP clean-up jobs are available. The oil giant is currently employing 13,000 fishermen in the effort. How many are left to actually catch fish?

If you’re taken to hysterics or love irrational thought, then avoid seafood altogether. But remember there are thousands of people whose income and source of pride is providing, distributing, processing, and preparing seafood items. Chefs like me, managers of restaurants, fish markets and suppliers have no advantage in selling bad seafood. To date, there’s been no tainted seafood detected by anyone.

For me, I’m eating New Orleans, Mississippi, and Gulf seafood. I trust they ARE safe. I trust everyone in the chain from fisherman to fish monger. I’m glad my car will never run on unleaded shrimp, and I can show children an actual crawfish, while enjoying the summer time flavors and health benefits of fresh seafood.

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