Over the last year, the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet, SMI) has seen a rise in reports from people in Stockholm contracting food poisoning from tuna.

However, the agency stopped short of issuing a warning to consumers to avoid eating the popular fish.

“Tuna is something that we all eat and there’s no reason to stop eating it,” Sofie Ivarsson, an epidemiologist at the agency, told The Local.

She added that the issue is something that those who handle fish professionally, such as distributors and restaurants, need to be aware of, as it is during the shipping and preparation process that the fish can become contaminated.

According to Ivarsson, there’s not much the individual consumer can do. She added that reason the rise in reports is limited to Stockholm may be due to the introduction in 2009 of a system allowing Stockholm residents to report suspected food poisonings online.

Since then, nine out of ten reports of histamine poisoning in 2010 originated from the Swedish capital. It is fairly uncommon to get histamine poisoning, sometimes called scombroid poisoning, from fish. When it happens, however, it is usually when eating fish from the scombridae family, which includes tuna, mackerel and wahoo fish.

The Experts Thought: Tuna is widely eaten and most popular fish in Scandinavian Region. The source of Tuna poisoning should be traced  and adequate steps should be placed to avoid mass food poisoning