TRANSPORT AND STORAGE OF FOOD 427 
London on her maiden voyage to New Zealand last January. Carbon 
dioxide for the chilled beef is carried in 160 steel bottles. 
FIsH. 
Let me now turn to that other great section of our animal food, fish. 
Fish is of special interest to Aberdeen, not only because Aberdeen is a great 
fishing port, but also because it was chosen by Hardy as the site of the 
Torry Research Station, the only institution in Great Britain that is devoted 
to research on the storage and transport of fish. A modest institution 
maybe, but the value of research does not depend on bricks and mortar. 
Many here will no doubt have read the recent report of the Sea-Fish 
Commission on the Herring Industry. At the outset that report states 
that ‘the article [that is, the herring] is highly perishable, making short 
voyages and immediate landing at the ports imperative,’ and in a footnote 
appears the statement: “ Herring caught more than 24 hours before landing 
are known in the trade as “‘ overdays,” and are of inferior quality.’ 
Obviously in the problem of storage of fish, with the knowledge that a 
herring twenty-four hours old is an ‘ overday ’ of inferior quality, Hardy had 
a subject after his own heart, for he loved a difficult task, and he loved it 
even more if it were associated with the sea. 
Fish, as food, is like meat: it is dead, and it was not surprising to find 
that the two main causes of deterioration in fish are the same as those 
operating in the case of meat, namely, autolysis and the action of micro- 
organisms. Of these ¢auses the second is by far the more important, the 
predominant organisms being bacteria. 
Smoking and Drying —As is well known, one of the earliest methods of 
preserving fish is that of smoking, which has been developed by the fishing 
industry itself on the basis of long experience. Fish are still smoked to-day 
as in olden times, over smouldering fires of sawdust, and it is not surprising 
that the scientific man, accustomed to controls in most of his work, looks at 
the process and wonders why it has never been put ona scientific basis. The 
final condition of the fish must depend not only on the antiseptic substances 
in the smoke, but on the range of temperature, the percentage humidity of the 
drying atmosphere, and on the rate of change of temperature and of humidity. 
At first there appears to be an absolute want of control of any of these factors, 
and, in fact, there are no mechanical controls such as we are accustomed 
to in modern industrial processes ; the one control is the human one, the 
smoker himself, who alters the position of the fish relative to the fires, 
adjusts the damping, and makes other small changes. The process in some 
measure must be at the mercy of the weather, and control of the cure is 
limited to the extent to which craftsmanship—and all of us admire the crafts- 
manship of both fisherman and curer—can overcome the inefficiency of the 
plant. In this process of drying and smoking, water is withdrawn and the 
action of the enzymes, that is, autolysis, is very much slowed down. 'The 
smoke, in addition to being a method of drying, also acts as a preservative 
by virtue of the antiseptic substances, such as formaldehydes and cresols, 
which it contains. 
Here, clearly, is a wide and interesting field for research if the process is to 
be brought completely under control. The problem was tackled here in 
Aberdeen at the Torry Research Station, and I am glad to say that sub- 
stantial progress has been made : in fact, it is not going too far to say that 
the framework of a method giving adequate control has been erected. In 
the experimental work the variables were isolated as much as possible. 
The experiments on temperature showed that a rise from 70° F. to 90° F. 
