Figure 4.--Presentatioii of proposed standard to industry members. 



grade standard for frozen fried fish 

 sticks, will show if there is a need for 

 tightening of these standards. 



Federal Specifications. 



Specifications reflecting good pro- 

 duction and packaging techniques were 

 made available to Federal, civil, and 

 military agencies for use in buying 

 chilled and frozen fish and frozen raw 

 breaded shrimp. Also, proposed speci- 

 fications for canned tuna, lobsters 

 (live and chilled and frozen meat), and 

 canned clams were developed and in- 

 formally presented to industry for their 

 comments. 



PRESERVATION AND ENGINEERING 



Four specialists in the field of fishery 

 technology and engineering are con- 

 ducting research designed to improve 

 quality and handling of fishery products. 

 Studies now in progress deal with the 

 preservation of fish using improved 

 icing, freezing, or storage techniques, 

 and the design, development, and appli- 

 cation of modern handling equipment 

 for the fishing vessel and shore plants. 



Preservation of Fishery Products. 



The preservation research at this 

 laboratory is designed to answer ques- 

 tions such as: How long can fish fillets 

 be kept in frozen storage? What will be 



Figure 5.--Packaging fish sticks for frozen-storage tests. 



the effect on storage life of the fillets if 

 the storage temp>erature is reduced by 

 10 or ZO degrees? What effect will 

 various packaging materials have on 

 the storage life of fishery products? 

 How can the quality of fish landed by 

 the vessel be improved? What is the 

 best method for freezing fish or shell- 

 fish aboard the vessel? 



An important phase of this research 

 is to determine the rate and extent of 

 the quality loss in frozen fishery prod- 

 ucts that occurs at temperatures below 

 freezing. In this project, the effect of 

 storage at various temperatures and 

 relative humidities, and the use of 

 packaging materials with various rates 

 of moisture and oxygen transmission 



