All of the Atlantic coast plants have tried to incorporate tuna 

 packing into their original fish canning 9perations, which may have 

 been sardines, mackerel, or the handling of cod, haddock, alevdves, 

 etc. Existing buildings and equipment have been pressed into service 

 for tuna as far as possible in order to hold down to the minimum the 

 amcunt of capital investment required for a new and untried packing 

 venture. Hence, usually the only specialized tuna equipment purchased 

 has been the packing machine and guillotine. The filler may be the 

 Pak-Shaper which is utilized for solid and chunk pack or a chunk filler 

 may be used. Occasionally precookers and tuna racks and baskets may 

 be purchased, but these may be outmoded equipment discarded by a west 

 coast packer. Other plants have adapted their sardine precookers or 

 dryers using the same racks and trays employed for sardines. In each 

 case the effort has been to hold down the capital investment until 

 they were sure of the supply of tuna and that the costs involved were 

 not excessive. Existing space, often not handily located, has been 

 utilized to house the tuna operation and extra labor is often involved 

 in moving material about to reach odd corners in the plant. All the 

 plants along the Atlantic (coast are of relatively small tuna handling 

 capacity ranging from 10 to 25 tons of fish per day. 



Recent Changes in Preparing and Shipping Tuna to United States Canneries 



Normally, only whole (round) frozen tuna are shipped for further 

 processing to United States canneries by Japan and other foreigi countries. 

 This is the practice which has become so prevalent since the advent of 

 the 45 percent ad valorem tariff on canned tuna in oil effective January 

 1, 1951. Recently, however, the Japanese have exported new forms of 

 tuna to the United States in an effort to reduce shipping costs and to 

 effect other savings. These new forms are frozen raw t\ma loins j frozen 

 cooked tuna loins; and frozen, canned (iinsealed), precooked tuna. Each 

 is in an experimental stage, not having taken on commercial significance 

 up to this time. 



FROZEN RAW TUNA LOINS 



Sample shipments of frozen raw yellowfin tuna loins from Japan 

 have been received in California and processed into canned tuna. In- 

 formation on the quality of the canned product is not available but 

 technologists believe that an acceptable product could be produced from 

 the raw loins if proper freezing and packaging procedures were used. 



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