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Kenya: Im­proved fish pro­cessing by smoking and solar dry­ing

What is at is­sue:

The pro­ject on Fish Pro­cessing by Solar Dry­ing and Smoking is be­ing con­duc­ted by Kenya Mar­ine Fish­er­ies Re­search In­sti­tute (KM­FRI). It is a pro­ject that in­volves im­proved tra­di­tional fish pro­cessing meth­ods by smoking and solar dry­ing to pro­duce high qual­ity fish for both local and wider mar­kets work­ing with local com­munit­ies at Gazi and Shi­moni in a bot­tom-up ap­proach. The meth­ods of pre­ser­va­tion em­ployed are en­vir­on­ment friendly and are set to im­prove on food se­cur­ity. The over­all ob­ject­ive of the pro­ject is to pro­duce, through com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion, high value smoked and solar dried mar­ine fish products for the mar­ket. 

Un­der the trop­ical con­di­tions, fresh fish spoils with light­ning speed, cool­ing sys­tems hardly ex­ist and their main­ten­ance is ex­pens­ive. With the sup­port of the Light­house Found­a­tion, Kenyan re­search­ers in­vest­ig­ate meth­ods of smoking and dry­ing in co­oper­a­tion with local wo­men groups, who are tra­di­tion­ally in charge of fish pro­cessing. The type of smoking wood, the ideal tem­per­at­ure in­side the dryer, taste and shelf life of products are ex­amined as well as the mar­ket in the hin­ter­land. This sci­entific study com­ple­ments an­other pro­ject of the Found­a­tion with the fish­er­men of the re­gion to in­tro­duce sus­tain­able fish­er­ies man­age­ment.

 

Kenya fisher

What's hap­pen­ing now:

The pro­ject is com­pleted.

What we have achieved:

Ap­pro­pri­ate tech­niques for smoking and dry­ing have been de­veloped and the cor­rect use was trained with the loc­als of vari­ous com­munit­ies. Product de­vel­op­ment was sci­en­tific­ally mon­itored and mar­ket­ing op­tim­ized.

Land­ing site mem­bers now use the dryer to dry and san­it­ize their fish. They were trained in the pro­duc­tion of smoked mar­ine fish and were in­volved in product de­vel­op­ment. The train­ing in­cludes ba­sics such as hy­gienic hand­ling in gut­ting and fil­let­ing and the re­fine­ment of exotic and local sauces. Es­pe­cially these products are very pop­u­lar.
 
In or­der to open new mar­kets in re­gions where smoked and solar-dried mar­ine fish are not yet wide­spread or even un­known, trips to the hin­ter­land have been un­der­taken, in par­tic­u­lar to­gether with fish pro­cessing wo­men from dif­fer­ent land­ing sites in or­der to pro­mote these products.

The mat­ter of fish safety came out as an emer­ging is­sue es­pe­cially re­gard­ing tak­ing the smoked or solar dried fish to the na­tional mar­kets like the es­tab­lished su­per mar­kets. The su­per­mar­kets in­sisted on know­ing the his­tory of the fish, where it is pro­duced and pack­aged. They also re­quire bar codes. We there­fore de­veloped for the first time a gen­eric HACCP (Haz­ard Ana­lysis crit­ical con­trol point) for dried fish. We also de­veloped a Qual­ity In­dex method for fresh Sigan­ids (“Taffi”) as a first point to­wards fish safety.

Pack­aging still re­mained a chal­lenge be­cause get­ting suit­able pack­aging for dried whole fish is not easy be­cause the sharp fins and bones pierce the pack­aging ma­ter­ial and for the smoked fish the chal­lenge is that the su­per­mar­kets to do not want even a whiff of fish smell in their shelves. This mat­ter is still be­ing ad­dressed to­gether with trace­ab­il­ity. It is easier to pack dried fil­let but then the price be­comes too high.

Since the in­tro­duc­tion of the Light­house pro­ject on im­proved fish smoking and dry­ing, grow­ing in­terest has been shown with other pro­jects also in­cor­por­at­ing such activ­it­ies in other areas. The World bank KCDP pro­ject has a func­tion on dry­ing, smoking and value ad­di­tion and there is an EU pro­ject that is also in­volving solar dried fish. The DVDs pro­duced are be­ing used as teach­ing aide in some uni­versit­ies.

Smoked and solar dried fish products before being taken for the exhibition
Smoked and solar dried fish products before being taken for the exhibition
Preparation of fish for the Slow fish event in Italy
Preparation of fish for the Slow fish event in Italy
Smoke Shimoni
Das Räuchergut wird auf leicht handhabbaren Tragegestellen über der Rauchquelle positioniert.

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Who has done it

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