flotation agents. Before fish oils can be 

 used commercially as ore flotation agents 

 we must next find uses for the remaining 

 fractions of the fish oils. Otherwise, 

 the entire burden of cost would fall on 

 the ore flotation fraction if the other 

 portions of the oil had no use and had to 

 be discarded. The entire success of the 

 program, therefore, depends on continuing 

 research to find additional uses for the 

 various fractions. 



This oil research program should be 

 very timely for the tuna industry. Since 

 tuna oils are of inferior color and are 

 usually not of high enough quality for 

 edible use, they are often the first to 

 be affected by falling prices. As you are 

 all aware, such a situation now prevails 

 making marketing of tuna oils difficult. 

 The fish-oil program when finally success- 

 fully applied, should greatly relieve this 

 situation. 



Application of other basic research 

 findings in the byproducts field should 

 also aid the tuna industry. For example, 

 in the Bureau 1 s program on nutrition of 

 fish oils at Hormel Institute, recent 

 findings have shown that tuna oils contain 

 some, though not great quantities, of es- 

 sential fatty acids. It is quite possible 

 that lack of adequate amounts of these 

 essential fatty acids is related to inci- 

 dence of steatitis (a nutritional disease 

 causing deposits of subcutaneous yellow 

 fat) in cats fed red-meat tuna pet food. 

 The beneficial effect of addition of vita- 

 min E then would be due, in part at least, 

 to its protective action on these essen- 

 tial fatty acids which occur in marginal 

 quantities in tuna. This research may 

 offer aid in solving this current diffi- 

 culty for the tuna industry. 



It has been suggested by some that 

 our basic research should be set up on a 

 species basis to investigate, for example, 

 the chemistry of tuna pigments or tuna 

 oil rather than fish in general. Actually 

 such an approach would cause enormous 

 overlapping and duplication of effort 

 since differences in the chemistry of 

 various species of fish are minor. There 

 is so much specialization in the fields 

 to be investigated that it is much better 

 to set up projects on the basis of, for 

 example, the organic chemistry of fish 

 oils or the biochemistry of fish proteins. 



We in technology, use organic chemists, 

 analytical chemists, biochemists, or 

 chemical engineers to study the basic 

 problems of fish-oil utilization. This 

 requires a large number of specialists in 

 each of several fields. If we were limited 

 to only a few scientists that could be af- 

 forded from our limited technology budget 

 for work on tuna, each man would have to 

 work in several specialized fields. 



We are, in effect, in competition 

 with research on technology of other food 

 products. In our oil research program, 

 for example, the meat industry is trying 

 to develop products from tallow competi- 

 tive with products we might produce from 

 fish oils. The U. S. Department of 

 Agriculture has Uo scientists working on 

 the chemistry of tallow. They do not 

 arbitrarily break down their research 

 according to mutton tallow and beef tal- 

 low despite the fact that there is a 

 greater chemical difference between these 

 than between any two fish oils. We in the 

 Bureau have only 3 organic chemists at 

 Seattle, plus half a dozen or so other 

 scientists in cooperating and contract 

 laboratories to work on all species of 

 fish oils. Under a species breakdown of 

 projects tuna oil could not fairly expect 

 more than one man to be assigned for tuna 

 oil work. This man would have to carry- 

 out biochemical, organic chemical, and 

 chemical engineering investigations on 

 tuna oils. This would clearly be a 

 wasteful and inefficient means of operat- 

 ing and would insure our competitors in 

 the meat industry in pushing their products 

 ahead of fish oils with little or no chance 

 of success on our part. 



A similar situation prevails with all 

 basic technological research projects. 

 When we come to the more applied work such 

 as that being carried out by Dr. Lassen 

 (Philip R. Park Foundation), the situation 

 is entirely different. Here it is proper, 

 and quite necessary, that the applications 

 be studied on the species where the problem 

 exists. Dr. Lassen's program, while still 

 at a quite basic level is concerned with 

 applications to specific problems of the 

 tuna industry. 



When we come to the still more 

 applied problems of the tuna processors 

 such as studies on plant efficiencies, it 

 is our feeling that for this type of 



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