processing

Global growth in processed fish products This article was featured in EUROFISH Magazine 2 2021. Fish is a highly perishable food. Safeguarding its quality and nutritional value and avoiding damage, unnecessary waste and premature spoilage requires special efforts. For this reason, there has been an ongoing effort across the globe to extend the shelf life of sensitive raw products with suitable processing and preservation methods to further diversify the range of fish products on offer and to make these products more convenient.

Producing food requires huge resources but an estimated one seventh of the resulting products are lost before they are consumed, and in the case of fish and seafood as much as one third! Whether spoiled, destroyed or carelessly thrown away – losses on the way from origin to plate are high. New strategies are now being developed to reduce or, better still, to avoid food waste and losses altogether. This article was featured in EUROFISH Magazine 5 /2020. During the catching and processing of fish and seafood considerable amounts of waste occur. Some of it, roughly estimated at around 17%, is “disposed of” at sea immediately after the catch. About twice as much is lost during processing on land. And then there are also losses that occur during transport, at individual stages of trade, in the catering trade, or in consumers’ homes. A definition of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is often used to distinguish between “food losses” and “food waste”.

This article was featured in EUROFISH Magazine 5 / 2020. As in other countries the pandemic’s impact on the hotel, restaurant, and catering sector was brutal. Producers of canned fish products, an important part of the Latvian processing industry, however experienced an uptick in demand as consumers took to stockpiling shelf stable goods and those with long expiry dates in the early days of the virus’ spread.