Standard Norwegian fishmeal- and fishoil process.Heat treatment requirements

Summary

The present report is a consolidated version of former Nofima Report K-371, incorporating new kinetic data on thermal inactivation of IPNV (Nygaard and Myrmel, 2010). Report K-371 has been withdrawn. The project was initiated by the Norwegian Seafood Federation (FHL) after a request from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority to define a standard Norwegian fish meal process and criteria to kill infectious agents present in wild fish and aquaculture fish. The report summarizes inactivation data for Enterobacteriaceae/Salmonella and bacterial/viral pathogens of fish. Inactivation effects resulting from various temperature-time (T/T) combinations were estimated from available D-and z-values. Wild fish should be processed according to the “fishmeal method” as outlined in Regulation (EC) 1774/2002. The minimum conditions proposed for heat treatment of wild fish are 70 °C/20 minutes which provides 100 LOG10 reductions of Enterobacteriaceae/Salmonella. The minimum conditions proposed for heat treatment of aquaculture fish are 76 °C/20 minutes or other T/T combinations resulting in 3 LOG10 reductions of IPNV. The report describes heat treatment at two alternative stages of the manufacturing process; in cooker and in indirect steam drier. For production of fishmeal, fulfilment of minimum conditions for heat treatment may be documented either in the cooker or in the steam driers. For fishoil production, inactivation has to rely on heat treatment in the cooker. The report proposes conditions to be fulfilled in order to allow processing of category 3 materials from wild fish and aquaculture fish in the same processing unit.