I’ve been buying shrimp and catfish at Latino markets, because they’re of good quality and a cheap price. A couple of times, however, when I’m about to prepare the fish, I smell it first as usual to ensure it’s fresh, and I detect a residual scent as of soap or something. It doesn’t smell bad, just faintly like lemon pledge. Are they rinsing the fish off in something to keep it from smelling stale? If so, is this a common practice?
There was an exposé on TV (60 Minutes, or maybe 20/20, or something similar) where the show sent a journalist to become an employee and get the inside scoop on this at a grocery store, complete with hidden micro-camera. The journalist was instructed to use bleach to rinse fish that was past its prime and re-label it with a new sell-by date. The impression they left was that although this practice was not typical, it was far from unheard of.
No mention of lemon but I suppose lemon could be added to cover up any smell of bleach.
Apparently the bleach itself was not dangerous to the consumer but the practice was definitely fraudulent.
I worked in several fish markets when I was a teenager. We washed fish with water out of the tap. When the fish were not present, we cleaned all surfaces with chlorine bleach.
I’ve worked on shrimp boats and I have been a commercial fisherman. We washed fish and shrip with sea water. Again, when seafood was not there with used chlorine bleach.
Never washed a fish with bleach, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it done.
A safety note:
You might find “de-scaler” in a hardware store. It is NOT meant for fish scales.