baskets is a help in reducing on the severity of this problem as it 

 keeps fish away from the metal baskets thus eliminating much of the 

 tendancy for fish particles to adhere to the basketo It also provides 

 a fresh surface on which the fish rests regardless of whether the bas- 

 ket was completely clean at the start of each cook. 



While it is not believed that any simple improvemont in precook- 

 ing equipment and methods would greatly improve efficiency of operations, 

 there is room for improvement in some plants in the care taken to obtain 

 a uniform cook. Saving of just 1 percent of the total maximum of 30 per- 

 cent shrinkage loss during cooking and cooling would", be well worthwhile. 

 Such, or even much larger, savings are being made in many of the plants 

 by careful attention to cooking temperatures and times and by more care- 

 ful sorting of the fish by sizes. 



Careful control of precooking time means not only avoiding over- 

 cooking, but also making certain that the fish are not undercooked. In- 

 sufficiently cooked fish are vei^' difficult to clean and greatly slow 

 up the rate of cleaning. Furthermore, under- precooked fish make a poor 

 appearing pack because of the tendency cf the fish to shrink excessive- 

 ly during final retorting in the can. 



Losses during cooling of the precooked fish amount to as much as 10 

 percent. Much of this is evaporation of moisture from the hot fish. Main- 

 tenance of high humidity in the cooling areas will reduce such losses and 

 some plants are experimenting along this line in order to keep shrinkage 

 during cooling to a minimum. 



aEANING 



The cleaning of tuna requires more hand labor than all other shore 

 operations combined. It is the one stage of the aitire canning opera- 

 tion, aside from the butchering operation, which has not been completely 

 mechanized. It is for this reason that changes and improvements in clean- 

 ing methods may be expected to yield the biggest labor savings of any 

 single operation. Savings rai^t be obtained either by making the exist- 

 ing procedure more efficient or by replacing the existing methods with 

 some more hi^ly mechanized procedure. The tuna industry is working 

 along both these lines in an effort to improve the efficiency of the 

 cleaning operation. 



Existing practice varies somevhat between the most efficient can- 

 neries and some having older equipment . The following is typical 



294 



