1. The Seventh FAO Expert Consultation on Fish Technology in Africa was organized by the Fish Utilization and Marketing Service, Fishery Industries Division of FAO, in collaboration with the Food Technology Institute (ITA) and with the FAO Regional Office for Africa, Accra, Ghana. Previous Consultations were held in Dar-es Salaam (1980), Casablanca (1982), Lusaka (1985), Abidjan (1988), Accra (1991) and Kisumu (1996).
2. The Consultation was held at Hotel "Les Bougainvilliers", Saly-Mbour, Senegal, from 10 to 13 December 2001.
3. The Consultation was addressed on behalf of the Director-General of FAO by Mme Marie Ba, assistant programme officer at the FAO Representation in Senegal. She expressed thanks to the Government of Senegal for having hosted the meeting and congratulated the experts for having been selected. She reminded of past and present FAO support to development of the fisheries sector, including through a sub-regional project funded by Luxemburg on Monitoring, Control and Surveillance of fishing activities, a regional project funded by the United Kingdom on Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods and several Telefood projects.
4. The Consultation was then addressed by Mr Guiro, Director-General of ITA. He expressed his gratitude for the fact that FAO had selected ITA as partner in organizing the Consultation and referred to ITA's long-standing track record in the fisheries post-harvest sector in Senegal and in West Africa through collaboration with national and international institutions including FAO. The fishery products section of ITA was one of its important pillars and there were plans for further strengthening of its national and regional role in development in the near future.
5. The Consultation was then addressed by the Minister of Fisheries of Senegal, Cheikh Saadibou. He expressed with honour the gratitude of the Government of Senegal for having been proposed to be host country of the Consultation. Fisheries are an important sector in the Senegalese economy employing 30 percent of the active population. Most of them were employed in the artisanal sector and over half of them are women. Although called "artisanal" he said that the volume and value of fishery products rather take an industrial dimension. He then formally opened the meeting.
6. The Programme is presented as Appendix A.
7. The Consultation was attended by 18 experts from Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, from the West-African Association for Development of Artisanal Fisheries (WADAF), from the Intergovernmental Organization for Marketing Information and Cooperation Services for Fishery Products in Africa (INFOPECHE), and from FAO. The list of attending experts is presented as Appendix B.
8. Mr Boubacar Diakité of ITA was the Chairman of the Consultation; Ms Yvette Diei, Mr Gbola Akande and Mr Paul Anoh were elected as Rapporteurs and Mr Frans Teutscher of FAO served as Technical Secretary of the Consultation.
9. The experts reviewed progress and problems in the area of post-harvest fish utilization, mainly in small-scale fisheries, and made a series of recommendations. Emphasis was placed on fresh fish utilization, fish processing, quality assurance and on marketing and socio-economic issues. The issues were introduced through:
- presentation by the Technical Secretary of a report on progress and events since the previous Consultation held in 1996;
- presentation of 20 papers;
- abstracts of 10 additional papers that were not presented;
- a field trip to fish landing and processing sites in Mbour and Joal.
10. The papers have been edited and are reproduced in Appendix C.
11. On the basis of the presentations and discussions draft recommendations were prepared by the secretariat; these were discussed, amended and adopted by the experts in the final session of the Consultation.
The experts adopted the following recommendations to FAO, its African member countries and to all institutes, institutions and persons involved or interested in fish utilization in Africa.
Fresh fish
1) Standards should be developed and disseminated for the design, materials, construction, use and maintenance of insulated fish containers for storage of fresh fish on ice in different types of fishing vessels and canoes, including (very) small ones.
2) Appropriate infrastructure should be designed and constructed for landing and transfer of fish. The facilities should include sufficient supply of clean water and should be managed by trained user committees such as beach management units.
3) Artisanal processing should not take place at the landing site but at a suitable distance from it in order to avoid cross-contamination of fresh fish.
4) Recognizing the importance of good quality fresh fish for income generation, it is necessary to ensure that ice is brought to the fish rather than the fish being taken to the ice. Supply of ice to remote areas should be stimulated through appropriate production, transport and storage units. Ice production should include block ice for ease of transport, storage and use. Ice stores or silos should be insulated, raised from the floor, with proper run-off and drainage of melt water and with sufficient clean space for ice handling. In view of the keen interest by the participants in the Senegalese ice silo concept there is a need for collaborative applied research for the improvement and dissemination of the technology.
5) Researchers should have a complete knowledge of commercial fish species from harvest to consumption, and in export markets. More studies are required on all characteristics of the species, including the water where it lives, its capture, its organoleptic, chemical, biological, microbiological, and seasonal characteristics, as well as all socio-economic aspects of the industry.
6) Spoilage patterns of warm water fish are different from those of temperate or cold waters; import regulations should take this into account and where feasible these regulations should be species-specific.
7) Appropriate holding systems should be promoted for keeping and transporting live fishery products, including lobsters and certain freshwater species.
Processing
8) There is a need to develop standards for traditional fishery products, not only for the product itself including quality and safety aspects, but also for the raw material and other ingredients, processing facilities, equipment, process parameters, packaging, storage, transport and marketing. There is an urgent need for such standards where traditional products are exported, in particular to the "ethnic" markets such as in Europe, USA, Canada, Japan, etc.
9) Pilot plants should be established in collaboration with research and development institutes and economic operators to assist in developing the standards and to serve as a model for the operators.
10) The experts support FAO's initiative to establish a database on traditional fishery products and offer to enrich it with descriptions and characteristics of typical African products such as fessiekh and guedj but also of smoked and dried products. They would welcome publication of the information including on the Internet.
11) Value-added products should be promoted from low-value fish, such as shrimp bycatch, small pelagics and also by-products from fish processing plants. Promising products include fish crackers, fish burgers and also fermented fish such as nuoc-mam. Also semi-finished products appear to have potential, such as the ground sardinella fillets produced in local beaches and markets in Senegal and Mauritania. Special emphasis must be placed on promoting marketing of the products after research and development have confirmed market potential. Research and development should involve all stakeholders, including fishermen, processors, traders and consumers, all the way from conception through marketing the results. The latter would include development of safety standards, market research, feasibility studies, consumption promotion, consumer education, etc. The research should be simple and should take into account traditional food habits.
12) Post-harvest loss assessment should be carried out in the full post-harvest chain from fishermen to retailers using the three methods developed and validated: informal fish loss assessment method, load tracking method and questionnaire method. To obtain reliable data on both physical and quality losses the load-tracking method is recommended but it should always be combined with elements of the informal participatory assessment method. The loss data also serve to identify control points in the chain and design and verify appropriate interventions. Furthermore they can be used to develop standards of processing, packaging, storage and marketing of fishery products. The manual developed for implementation of the methodologies by fisheries agents and researchers should be widely disseminated and its use promoted.
13) Guidelines should also be developed and disseminated to facilitate "do-it-yourself" assessment of physical and quality losses by economic operators themselves. The guidelines should enable operators to obtain reliable data on their losses. Improvement interventions should take into account not only the income lost through physical and quality losses, but also the cost of the proposed intervention.
14) Discards of bycatch should be considered as a post-harvest loss, in particular when the fish is dead. While recognizing the need to avoid the bycatch of juveniles, tropical fisheries pose difficulties in effecting bycatch selectivity. Such unavoidable bycatch should be utilized. Experience in United Republic of Tanzania and many other countries has shown that most of the bycatch is very well marketable. Utilization programmes should include stakeholder consultations of producers, traders, consumers, Government and researchers; furthermore, supportive legislation is required, as well as technological innovation in terms of handling, transfer, processing and marketing of the bycatch. Also boat design of trawlers and collector vessels may need to be reviewed.
15) Standards and guidelines should be developed and awareness campaigns should be carried out about the risks of chemicals and the correct use of allowed chemicals to combat insect infestation.
16) The use of salt as a control medium of insects should continue to be promoted in areas where salted products are not traditional. A level of 8-10% salt in the product (w/w) is recommended. Acceptability trials, consumer education and consumption promotion activities must be carried out. Also the repelling or insecticidal effect of herbs and spices should continue to be tested.
Quality assurance
17) The experts took note of the proposed European Union (EU) programme of assistance in the area of quality assurance of fishery products and suggested that partnership agreements should be developed to sustain such collaboration.
18) The experts also took note of the initiative towards a Regional Fish Safety Panel in Africa that would ensure improvement of quality and safety of fish originating from Africa so as to obtain and sustain a larger export market. The suggestion was made that this initiative could perhaps be supported under the above-mentioned EU programme.
19) Regional collaboration should be promoted in laboratory analysis for the purpose of standardization. Researchers should disseminate information of results to the industry.
Marketing and socio-economic issues
20) Fish export should be promoted and sustained because of its positive effects on the sustainability and improvement of livelihoods of the fishing communities, including the poor. This was clearly demonstrated by the effects of trade interruptions in Lake Victoria as a result of EU import bans.
21) Socio-economic effects and trade-offs of export-oriented fishery development should be thoroughly reviewed and regularly monitored in order to assure that the sustainability of livelihoods of all stakeholders is taken into account and that development and development policies are balanced from a socio-economic point of view.
22) It was recognized that Governments have a responsibility to promote sustainability of marketing and trade through enacting effective legislation and support of Competent Authorities, information services, training, laboratory facilities, and collaborative research and development between researchers, fisheries managers, communities and all other stakeholders.
23) Fish levies should be introduced and ploughed back for infrastructure improvement, as well as for research, information and advisory services to the industry, both at national and at subregional levels.
13. The seventh FAO Expert Consultation on Fish Technology in Africa was officially closed on 11 December 2001 by Mr Boubacar Diakité, Head Fishery Products of the Food Technology Institute ITA.
