Histamine in fish products on Croatian market

Abstract

It is recommended to eat blue fish at least twice a week, due to its high nutritional value and ingredients, primarily healthy fats and proteins. In addition to its advantages, the consumption of fish and fish products can bring potential hazards. Histamine poisoning has been reported as one of the most common issues related to seafood consummation. It is considered as relatively mild illness with symptoms like rash, urticaria, nausea, vomiting, but in some cases, due to high sensitivity, it can lead to severe symptoms and even to death. In order to insure safety of fish products, histamine determination is one of the safety requirements of European and Croatian legislation (Law on food hygiene and microbiological criteria for food, NN 83/2022). Despite that, there has been several recalls of fish products by Ministry of Agriculture from Croatian market in recent years. The aim of this paper was to determine histamine levels in 20 different products from Croatian retail stores by HPLC method. All tested samples have been in accordance with legally determined limits for histamine levels.