Nothing fishy here: 8th-graders develop method to detect spoiled fish

A green tag on frozen fish that turns red when the fish has been exposed to too much heat took top prize for a group of Israeli eighth graders in a local science competition this week. According to Maariv, the Ministry of Agriculture has expressed interest in the device and would consider using it to supervise processing procedures.

The five students from Savyonim School in Yehud won the top prize in the regional competition of the Food Factor Challenge, a sub-group of the international FIRST LEGO League robotics program for children between the ages 9-16, and will vie for the top prize in the international competition next month in St. Louis, MO.

The invention addresses the problem that frozen fish often thaws and re-freezes before being sold in stores, risking the growth of bacteria which may cause food poisoning. The students are in the process of obtaining a patent for the invention.

As a part of their project, they conducted a survey that revealed consumer concern over frozen fish is so high that 30% of Israelis will only buy fresh fish due to concerns over potential spoilage.

Avi Ostfeld, the students’ teacher and father of one of the team members, told Maariv that when a person buys fish from the store, he has no way of knowing if that fish thawed either in the factory or the delivery truck before being re-frozen. The young scientists’ tag turns red if the frozen fish thaw, and retains the red color even if the fish are re-frozen.

The students have also developed a bar code, to be scanned with a smart phone, which displays information on whether the fish have thawed and for how long, when they left the factory and their weight on leaving the factory.

In last year’s international competition, the same team placed second out of some 17,000 competitors, with a device that translated the body movements of disabled people into virtual movements on computer games.