Seafood Preservation has Two Meanings, and Both are Crucial

The term “fruits of the sea” may be a reminder of the topping on their favourite pizza for the consumer. For trawler crews, it could be a reminder of countless days spent on the waves facing life-threatening storms and other hazards to harvest those fruits. For retailers, fish represent a lucrative product for which demand is growing. However, without adequate measures to ensure seafood preservation, consumers would need to explore alternative diets, while alternative employment would be necessary for the harvesters and sellers of fish.

As stated earlier, the term “preserve” embraces two concerns faced by today’s fishing industry. Naturally, taking care in the preparation and processing of fish and fish products is vital to satisfy consumer expectations and maintain market demand. However, ensuring sufficient numbers of healthy fish in our oceans to meet the steadily growing demand for marine-based food products could soon be of even greater importance. Intensive seafood preservation efforts are already underway and involve captive breeding programmes, technology to reduce and reverse marine pollution, and alternative energy sources to cut the world’s carbon footprint and stave off global warming.

 

Regardless of how soon these efforts may begin to pay off, the fishing industry must continue to keep the world’s nations adequately supplied with plaice and hake fillets, fish fingers, calamari rings, and peeled prawns. To ensure both the safety and quality of these and other marine delicacies, the second form of seafood preservation is necessary. Without suitable treatment, fish of all kinds tend to deteriorate rapidly once they have been removed from their natural environment.

 

One can immerse fish in brine, store them in a freezer, or freeze them inside blocks of ice to delay the onset of post mortem changes. However, these are only temporary measures. More effective methods will be necessary to preserve the condition of fish once it has landed and is awaiting sale to food processing companies, wholesalers, retailers, and restaurant owners. In this case, the term seafood preservation refers to the use of specially formulated chemical preparations to prevent undesirable post-mortem changes. Other preparations of this type may eliminate any microorganisms present, which might otherwise cause spoilage or pose a potential health hazard.

 

The appearance of the goods they purchase will invariably have a strong influence on consumers, especially when buying food. Just as we may squeeze a mango and check its colour to determine if it is ready to eat, we tend to judge the quality of prawns or calamari steaks in a similar fashion. A suitable seafood preservation product can, for example, inhibit the process known as melanosis. The phenomenon is due to post-mortem oxidation of natural chemicals present in the flesh of crustaceans, such as prawns and results in blackening, which, although harmless, is unacceptable to the average consumer.

 

Other products of this type may be effective in softening the muscle and connective tissues of molluscs, which renders them more suitable for cooking, processing, and display when raw or frozen. Still others play a role in preserving the colour of intensely pigmented fish like red mullet. These are just some of the ways in which seafood preservatives ensure the fish we eat will always look and feel as good as it tastes.

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