Dear colleagues,
I would like to mention that bibliography of production of fish
silage at artisanal (small scale) level exists and the technology has been
and is applied in many places around the world, although, as many artisanal
technologies it is difficult to keep track.
The idea of fish silage started in Sweden around 1930 and was
further developed in Denmark some years later. However, the colleague in UK
could start the story from the Torry Advisory Note No 64 "Fish silage" (I.N.
Tatterson and M.L. Windsor). The Torry Research Station (Aberdeen, Scotland)
does not exist any longer (unfortunately) but their publications for sure
can be found in the good fish technology libraries. Tatterson published some
years later a paper on this issue: "Fish silage-Preparations, properties and
uses" Animal Feed Science and Technology, 7:153-159 (1982).
Fish silage produced with organic acids created some problems, as
already was mentioned, therefore around the 70' people started to look into
alternatives ways. A good starting point is the paper by Disney et. al.,
"Development of fish silage/carbohydrate animal feed for use in the
tropics", Trop. Sci. 20(2), 1978 (London, UK).
FAO started to promote fish silage in the early 50' (do not worry I
will not start the bibliography since then). However, there are two
publications that deserve to be mentioned due to amount of research they
included. They are the:
Proceedings of the IPFC workshop on Fish Silage. FAO Fish. Rep No. 230
(1982). This report is out-of-print, however, if necessary it could be
purchased in the form of micro-fiche from the FAO library. This paper was
mainly based on the experience in Asia.
Suplemento. 2da Consulta de Expertos sobre Tecnología de Productos Pesqueros
en América Latina. Informe de Pesca No. 441 (Supl.) (1992)
This document includes 11 papers on biological fish silage of research
performed in different countries of Latin America, including feeding trials
under controlled conditions in pigs, chicken, calves and fish. The problem,
for the non-Spanish readers is that the documents are available only in
Spanish. However, they contain the most extensive feeding trials under
controlled conditions ever published on different alternatives of biological
(or microbiological) fish silage. I still have some free copies of this
publication available if somebody is interested.
Two of the colleagues that participated in this Latin American
effort were Prof. Rafael Bello from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in
Caracas and Prof. Enrique Bertullo from the University of the Republic,
Montevideo, Uruguay. They may have some publication or abstract in English
(I know that Prof. Bertullo was invited to present his results in USA
Universities). Their e-mails are as follows, and if you are interested you
could contact them directly:
Prof. Enrique Bertullo: ebertullo@redfacil.com.uy
<mailto:ebertullo@redfacil.com.uy>
Prof. Rafael Bello: rbello@strix.ciens.ucv.ve
<mailto:rbello@strix.ciens.ucv.ve>
Personally I had the possibility to work in the field introducing
this technique (biological fish silage) and results were always
satisfactory. In particular it allowed to combine fish and vegetable (and
fruits) wastes to obtain a useful product that could be kept. The lactic
acid bacteria developed controlled effectively pathogenic bacteria and we
did not observe problem of this type.
Control of the fermentation under artisanal conditions is rather simple,
just to adjust the NaCl to the acid lactic bacteria, around 5 % (lactic acid
bacteria are tolerant to salt) which in turn eliminates most of the common
bacteria and pH paper to check pH fall.
The main problem is the amount of water remaining in the product
that makes not possible to think about large productions because due
transportation (by kg of protein) would be prohibitive. There is the problem
of the uniformity of the composition of the silage too, and this will depend
on raw materials (offal and discards) at hand. It is possible to look at
that if you have a lab to make measurements at least during a year.
Variations (availability of raw materials for this purpose) are in practice
a seasonal function, just like Nature is.
Kind regards.
Hector M. Lupin
Fish Utilisation and Marketing Service (FIIU)
Fish safety and quality assurance
Tel.: (39)(06)570-56459
Fax. (39)(06)570-55188
e-mail: hector.lupin@fao.org <mailto:hector.lupin@fao.org>
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert A. LaBudde [mailto:ral@lcfltd.com]
Sent: Friday, July 28, 2000 5:15 PM
To: seafood@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Re: Fish silage
At 12:42 PM 7/28/00 +0100, Richard wrote:
>Here in the UK our processors are getting used to the idea
that they have
>to pay to dispose of waste fish material, rather than have
it sent back to
>sea. Often this is in relatively small quantities but on a
daily
>basis. A project in the SW of England is seeking ways to
use the waste,
>one project is looking at fish silage. In the past this
has not taken off
>because the end product is too heavy to retain a commercial
value if
>transported around. Does anyone know of either, a way in
which small
>producers can use the waste, rather than having it sent to
costly
>industrial waste disposal contractors or of any recent
advances in fish
>silage perhaps on a small scale, for example, are there any
farm scale
>silage systems that would allow the product to be
manufactured where the
>end product could be fed to pigs direct.
Welcome to the club!
In North America, hog and cattle farmers have had the same
problem with
animal waste. They dump it in the water supply (which has
changed river
flora and fauna and helped to create the "Pfisteria"
problem on the east
coast of the US), and they dump the semi-liquid waste as
free fertilizer on
neighboring farms.
Using the waste as fertilizer on neighboring farms has lead
to the
Walkerton, Ontario, E. coli O157 outbreak due to
contamination of aquifers.
Paper companies and meat processors have dealt with the
issue by building
water treatment ponds and doing further processing on waste
(e.g., drying,
extraction, etc.). Byproducts from your operation could
include fishmeal,
composted fertilizer, isolated proteins, etc. Those used for
pets or humans
would have to be made from edible waste.
In the cheese industry in North America, whey waste is the
problem. The
high biological oxygen demand and effect on river ecology
created expensive
disposal. This has spawned a "whey protein concentrate"
industry over the
last 20 years.
I suggest you consider the building of a cat food canning
plant near the
fish processors. This would be an efficient solution to your
problem and
should produce a product highly desirable to consumers in
the UK where BSE
is a large issue in meat-based products.
================================================================
Robert A. LaBudde, PhD, PAS, Dpl. ACAFS e-mail:
ral@lcfltd.com
Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. URL:
http://lcfltd.com/
824 Timberlake Drive Tel: 757-467-0954
Virginia Beach, VA 23464-3239 Fax: 757-467-2947
"Vere scire est per causas scire"
================================================================
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