Reports that the French Government has agreed to replace the 'test de la souris' for oyster safety are, if anything, overdue (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/03/france-scraps-oyster-test-mice). The test was entirely based on injecting three fully-sighted mice with 'concentrated oyster fluids'. If two or more mice died within 24 hours, a temporary ban was applied to local sales of the shellfish. This rather crude test, with its tiny number of subjects, is claimed to have led to many false positives in which oysters were condemned without there being any real evidence that they had accumulated toxins from harmful micro-algae. It is maintained that this forced a number of oyster producers into bankruptcy. It is proposed to replace the mouse test by a, yet unspecified, 'advanced chemical test'.
No comments:
Post a Comment