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Increasing demand for food safety has recently resulted in focusing the
spotlight of attention on parasitic organisms in seafood. Even though most
fish parasites are usually not harmful to human health, infected fish lots
have often been rejected by consumers, creating serious economic losses
for the commercial fisheries industry. It is likely because correct information
from reliable sources is hardly to be available for risk analysis of fish
parasites. Without a doubt, Japan is the biggest consuming country of enormous
kinds of seafood and has imported a large amount of exotic fishes from
overseas. Ironically, it has provided a convenient situation for Japanese
parasitologists to look for a variety of fish parasites. Under these circumstances,
we plan to compile a database of parasites in fish and shellfish (for short,
D-PAF), which serves the science-based and the most up-to-date information
on fish parasites.
Mainly, fish parasites which cause serious troubles in food hygiene (such
as zoonotic infection) or problems rejected by consumers (even though harmless
to human) have been listed, but several parasites which occur only in fish
farms have also been included in D-PAF. It means that the target is from
producers to consumers. Information page for each parasite is composed
of concise pieces of fclinical signf, eparasitologyf, epathologyf, ehealth
hazard (risk assessment to public health)f, ediagnosisf and some clear
photographs showing typical disease signs and parasite itself. The fish
name is usually based on the FishBase (http://www.fishbase.org/), but some
are changed into more commonly used name in Japan (e.g., Seriola quinqeradiata is called as not eJapanese amberjackf in
FishBase but eyellowtailf). Our hope is that D-PAF is useful not only for
ordinary people but also diagnostic technicians, students and some researchers
working on fish parasites for many purposes.
The Organizing Committee of D-PAF:
Dr. Hiroshi Yokoyama (The University of Tokyo)
Dr. Kazuo Ogawa (The University of Tokyo)
Dr. Kazuya Nagasawa (Hiroshima University)
Dr.
Jun Araki (Meguro Parasitological Museum)
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