Vancouver Island University, the federal food inspection agency and Island First Nations are working together to improve shellfish food safety.
Harvesting shellfish from Island shorelines has fed Indigenous people since time immemorial, but settlement, industrial activity and climate change have led to seasonal closures and consumption warnings.
Now, the university and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have several projects in partnership with local nations, including studying the levels of toxins in urchins that cause paralytic shellfish poisoning, how they accumulate, and risks to humans.
They are also studying faster methods to gather shellfish samples for testing, to improve turn-around times at the federal lab in Burnaby.
For more information about the research projects, visit VIU.
