Marine Aquaculture Development in Egypt
Italian Egyptian Debt SWAP Program

Technical Report
Fish Handling and Processing
May15.2012, Alexandria,Egypt.
Introduction :
Food quality control is necessary to ensure that food is safe, of good quality and available in adequate amounts, in time, at affordable prices to ensure an acceptable nutritional and health status for all population groups.
Food quality control includes all activities carried out to ensure the quality and safety of the food at all stages of the food supply chain from primary production or purchase, through processing and storage, to distribution and consumption.
Making safe food is an effort, involving the suppliers, the production plant or factory, and all of us to protect the beneficiary′s health. The main risks are a contamination by micro-organisms, toxins, foreign matters, chemical contaminants, and excess of moisture content, a degradation of the nutritional value, or a pest infestation.
Most of these risks can be easily prevented or mitigated by a better knowledge of the risk factors for each commodity, by safe handling of food, by a careful inspection and possibly analysis, in short by a better management of food commodities.
Food establishments have the primary responsibility for food safety. The development and implementation of risk assessment programs is a reliable and responsible step to help ensure the safety of food offered for consumption.
Fish Processing Technology :
Potentialiy to harvest more products from aquatic environments is actually very much limited. Productivity is decreasing as more and more fisheries are getting heavily or over exploited and productive habitats or environments are damaged and degraded.
Growing aquaculture technology can partially supply the increasing demand but often harvested fish are not properly preserved shortening their market life and loosing value.
One means of reducing the shortage between production and demand is to efficiently utilize aquatic and aquaculture resources by the application of effective processing technology to reduce post-harvest losses and wastage.
Fish processing technology includes the different processes and techniques in the post-harvest handling, processing and marketing of aquatic products from the time of harvesting to final utilization.
The application of processing technology in aquatic products is mainly aimed at preventing or delaying spoilage brought about by micro-organisms, enzymes, and physical or mechanical means.
Contents
1 - Fish Physiology
2 - Spoilage of Fish
3 - Fish Before Processing
4 - Handling of Fresh Fish
5 - Fish Conditioning
6 - Fish Processing
7 - Food Technology and Processing methods
8 - Minor Fishery Products
9 - Waste Production