Assuring Quality of Purchased Fish Based Products

I would need a little advice. If a company manufactures fish based products and buys the fish (frozen) from the proper places (meaning with the minimum quality requirements in place) what additional acceptance procedures should he implement to make sure that eveyrthing is ok? For example: to make sure that the fish is free of anisakis: is documentation enough? True that being frozen any parasite would be dead but if you find traces in the end product (be it minced with other ingredients) I think a company would have a problem to resolve.

Dear Konrad,

Your question seems to be effectively asking how to set up a purchase specification. The details may depend on the specific product, eg fish species / catching area in the case of parasites. This may also be reflected in the price of course.

Can suggest some typical basic steps (some of which are preliminary to initiating any business for many buyers) –

(1) Request appropriate qualifications of supplier if relevant, eg HACCP related etc
(2) Prepare quality/safety specification to be mutually agreed for the transaction
(3) Request samples and compare to specification in (2). Discuss if out of compliance, possibly with necessity for further samples/modification of specification.
(4) Other activities such as auditing the supplier if appropriate.

If you wish for ideas about suitable specifications, Codex is one valuable source and the Americans also hv some detailed equivalent documentation.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Charles,
thanks for your reply. The four points you indicate are the basics of any quality system for supplier qualification. If a vendor passes all these points but something does go wrong with his production / quality line I was wondering if there was anything that could be done in acceptance or maybe during processing that could avoid mincing parasites. I hope this is not wanting to be too picky but not having specific experience in the food industry I really do need some illiminated comments in order to remain within reasonable requests.
All the best
Konrad

Dear Konrad,

Your question seems to be effectively asking how to set up a purchase specification. The details may depend on the specific product, eg fish species / catching area in the case of parasites. This may also be reflected in the price of course.

Can suggest some typical basic steps (some of which are preliminary to initiating any business for many buyers) –

(1) Request appropriate qualifications of supplier if relevant, eg HACCP related etc
(2) Prepare quality/safety specification to be mutually agreed for the transaction
(3) Request samples and compare to specification in (2). Discuss if out of compliance, possibly with necessity for further samples/modification of specification.
(4) Other activities such as auditing the supplier if appropriate.

If you wish for ideas about suitable specifications, Codex is one valuable source and the Americans also hv some detailed equivalent documentation.

Rgds / Charles.C

Dear Konrad,

If you are buying whole fish or similar, there is a routine step in the processing into meat which removes the majority of parasites. Known as candling which involves inspection of the fish fillets on a special illuminated-from-below table to highlight the occurrence of any parasites. These are then manually removed with forceps or knives.

If you are purchasing pre-processed fillet material this step should hv been done already so that a typical spec. will usually hv an appropriately low acceptance limit for parasites. If the problem still occurs, the same procedure can be re-applied of course although the inspection obviously gets progressively more difficult if you are purchasing product like already-minced blocks of fish.

some info here -

http://www.fao.org/w...1e/x5951e01.htm

http://www.stainless...w&id=1&Itemid=2

Rgds / Charles.C

Thank you very much and have a good day!

Konrad