83) The Committee recalled that this standard had been developed initially by the Coordinating Committee for Asia and was forwarded by the Executive Committee to the CCFFP for finalization. The Committee discussed the Draft Standard section by section and made the following changes.
Section 1. Scope
84) The Committee amended the Scope to clarify that the Draft Standard did not cover products of “ enzymatic maturation in brine” as proposed by the Delegation of France; clarified the intended use as proposed by the Delegation of Malaysia; and deleted the reference to processing as it was covered by the following section.
Section 2.2 Process Definition
85) The Committee accepted the proposal by the Delegation of Thailand to clarify provisions regarding the usage of boiling water and replace “salt water” by “brine or clean sea water”.
86) In order to be consistent with other standards for fishery products, the Section on Packing was moved to this Section and amended in order to include packing requirements to prevent oxidation.
Section 2.3 Handling Practice
87) In order to address the formation of the toxin of Clostridium botulinum, the Committee decided to insert a warning sentence regarding the timing of the drying process, as follows: “the drying process must be sufficiently controlled to preclude the formation of Clostridium botulinum toxin”.
88) The Delegation of Brazil stressed the need to eviscerate fish of a size superior to 6.5cm to avoid risks to human health and proposed to include this requirement in the standard.
Section 3.2 Final Product
89) The Committee noted that the wording of Section 3.2.1 was different from other standards and for the purpose of consistency decided to use the wording of the Standard for Quick Frozen Fish Sticks (Fish Fingers) and Fish Portions and Fish Fillets - Breaded or in Batter with reference to sections on Examination, Sampling and Analysis, Defectives, and Lot Acceptance.
90) The Representative of FAO drew the attention of the Committee to the fact that distinction should be established between breakage and belly burst due to the risk of histamine.
Section 3.4 Decomposition
91) The Committee had an extensive debate regarding the role and the level of histamine as a quality indicator in this section. The Delegation of Thailand drew the attention of the Committee to the fact that there was no section on decomposition in the standards under development and that histamine related to quality is not an appropriate indicator for these products. Therefore it was not practical to have two levels of histamine in one standard, for quality and for safety, and this section should be deleted. This view was supported by the Delegations of Indonesia and Vietnam.
92) The Observer from the EC pointed out that the provision of 10mg/100g of histamine was very important as a decomposition indicator for those products and the need for two levels of histamine was well substantiated scientifically. This view was supported by some other delegations.
93) The Delegation of Norway referred to the Proposed Draft Standard for Salted Herring with “enzymatic maturation” in brine and questioned whether histamine was adequate as a quality indicator in all Codex standards.
94) The Chairman noted that the provision for histamine had been included at the last session for consistency with the standard for sardines and sardine-type products, which covered species of the same family (Engraulidae).
95) The Committee noted that it was not possible to reach consensus on the level of histamine as a quality indicator for dried salted anchovies at this stage and therefore decided to adjourn the consideration of the Draft Standard at this session. The Committee agreed that this matter would be subject to further discussion by its next session, on the basis of additional information.
Status of the Draft Standard for Dried Salted Anchovies
96) The Committee agreed that the Draft standard as amended during the present session would be returned to Step 6 for further comments, especially on the Decomposition section and also sections which were not discussed, for consideration by the next session of the Committee (see Appendix IV).
