Why does seafood go bad faster than meat?
In: Biology
An answer I’m not seeing here is slaughter method. And there’s very easily observable evidence of this.
In America, beef is king. And it is treated as such. There are strict rules and regulations surrounding the slaughter of cows to be as humane and quick as possible. Typically this involves a calming introduction to the killing line (Temple Grandin method), a stunning phase where the animal is rendered senseless immediately (captive bolt gun typically) and then the animal is immediately bled and hung and processed. Almost all four-legged animals are then hung upside down at which point gravity can help break up the rigor mortis process. This conserves a great deal of the ATP in the animal’s cells as it has not struggled in death which slows the build up of lactic acid. The bleeding of the animal helps to flush and prevent bacterial growth and by all accounts this improves every facet of the animal’s meat in eating. This is why you can age a large primal cut of beef in some instances for over a year.
Perciform fish rarely get the same treatment, especially in the Western world. The vast, vast majority of fish are trawled in a massive net or purse seine, or they are gill netted where they struggle against thousands of pounds of other panicked fish or they die a slow, painful death on the line until they are hauled in. After this frenzied struggle they are typically dumped en masse on to a boat deck to suffocate to death and bake in the sun. This poor method of slaughter causes immense stress to the animal and does the exact opposite of what we discussed with beef. All ATP is consumed and converted into lactic acid, fish are rarely bled, they go immediately into rigor and then they form favorable conditions for bacteria to grow.
But in Japan, tuna is king. A quick Google search of ikejime or shinkeijime will show you how fish should be treated. They are hauled in quickly on a line, they are stunned or spiked to cause instant brain death and then their gills are cut while their heart is still beating to pump out all of the blood. Then they immediately go into an ice slurry to bring their body temperature down.
Properly slaughtered fish can then be aged for a great deal of time and they age much like a steak would with complex proteins breaking down into savory glutamic acid via favorable enzyme activity. This is what makes top tier sushi so delicious, it is simply impossible to develop those sorts of flavors in a fish that was killed that morning. Not that fresh fish is bad or tastes bad, but it’s just sort of been a Band-Aid signal of quality that never addressed the root issue of the problem, that being poor handling practices.
Source: am chef. Love the fishes. American seafood system is fucked. Not surprised.
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