Occurrence of Allergy-like Food Poisoning Caused by “Mirin”-Seasoned Meat of Dorado (Coryphaena hippurus)

Abstract

Portions of meat with a pungent and bitter taste found in “mirin”-seasoned dorado were considered to have been responsible for an outbreak of food poisoning in Yokohama in 1984. In this study the substance responsible was analyzed. The concentration of volatile basic nitrogen and viable counts of total bacteria were low in the toxic fish meat samples implicated in the food poisoning as well as in control fish meat, but the pH values were higher than that of the control, and the histamine content was 107 to 195mg/100g, which is higher than the amount causing allergy-like food poisoning. Cadaverine was found at concentrations of 17.3 to 20.8mg/100g in the toxic meat. The pungent and bitter tastes of the toxic meat were considered to be due to histamine and cadaverine, respectively. The viable counts of histamine-forming bacteria in the toxic meat were too low to account for the production of a large amount of histamine. The activity of histidine decarboxylase was found to be much higher in the toxic meat than in the control meat.