This FDA table details the species-specific risks of live parasites in fish. But the information here is a little misleading, and meant to serve more as an agency warning about the perils of mislabeling fish than as a practical guide to which fish must be frozen prior to raw consumption. Exempted from the FDA’s freezing requirements are, as Herron mentions, large species of tuna—deemed safe based on the frequency with which they are eaten in raw form and the infrequency of related, documented parasitic infection—as well as aquacultured fish, like salmon, given verification that the feed it’s raised on is parasite-free. To meet FDA guidelines, every other type of fish must be frozen to those temperatures, even if the table does not indicate that it carries a parasite risk, because it “may have a parasite hazard that has not been identified if these fish are not customarily consumed raw or undercooked.”
It’s a paradox: The FDA will not deem a fish free from parasite hazards, and thus safe to eat raw without freezing, unless that fish is eaten raw, without being frozen, frequently enough to present sufficient evidence of its safety. To Luke Davin, the general manager of Osakana, this standard means that “deviating from [the FDA’s] ‘freeze it all’ approach puts the burden of testing and proof on the processor.” He says that most, if not all, fish markets lack the resources to exhaustively test the fish they receive for parasite hazards. The easiest solution, then, is simply to freeze everything.
