Under Section 701 of the PedersLL Food, Drug, and Cosmetic 

 Act, the Food and Drug Administration of the United States Department 

 of HeELLth, Education, and Welfare is granted authority to give inspec- 

 tion service to shrimp processing plants. 10/' This authority has been 

 used by seme canneries to control gueQity in processing. Resident 

 Inspectors are assigned to the cannery, and it is their duty to see 

 that the regulations of the Act are cosnplied with. Tixe service is 

 granted for a ml ntnnnn of 9 months. The firms subscribing pay fees 

 to defray the cost of the service >^ich, in 1955> was $500 a month 

 plus 15 cents per case in plants visited by the Bureau of Business and 

 Economic Research of the University of Miami, Florida. Firms utilizing 

 the government inspection service are entitled to place on their labels 

 the statement: "Production supervised by United States Food and Drug 

 Administration." 



The federal inspection service is not mandatory. During the 



1930's federal inspection was quite popular and more thsm 30 canneries 



vere utilizing it. The cost of the service has steadily increased 



since that time and as a result, only seven canners were using govern- 

 ment inspectors in the sunnier of 1955* 



In Freezing Establishments 



Quality control in plants producing frozen headless shrisip is 

 left to the discretion of the individual processor. Other than the 

 voluntary standards of the Shrimp Association of the Americas there are 

 no set or specifically spelled out standards to adhere to. Treide prac- 

 tice requires that shrimp size or count per pound be Indicated either 

 on the inside package or on the master carton. Quality control in the 

 freezing establishments visited by the research firms working under con- 

 tract to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service was limited to visual 

 inspection of shrimp prior to grading to cull out damaged shrinrp or 

 other extraneous matter, a frequent spot-checking of cartons to verify 

 correctness of grade emd weight of pack, and a penetration testing of 

 product before glazing to check teaqperature . There apparently is no 

 standard for the amount of water needed or the method to be used in 

 assuring proi>er glazing of the frozen product. 



Belief has existed that the more rapid the freezing, the 

 better the product, because the *™An crystals formed by fast freezing 

 would not penetrate the cell walls. It was reasoned that the large 

 Ice crystals irtiich formed during relatively slow freezing punctiured 

 the cell walls and freed the fluids ^rtiich caused "drip" on thawing. 

 Research has shown that the temperature of storage is far more inipor- 

 tant than the rate of freezing, unless freezing is so slow that 

 decoopositlon occurs during this operation. 



10/ The inspection provisions relating to canned shrimp are 

 reproduced in Appendix A of this chapter. 



83 



