Processing
Processing is the preparation of food for cooking and eating and can help retain quality, extend shelf life and add value to the product.
It is split into two types:
- Primary Processing- is the first stage where little change is made to the product and involves basic processes such as harvesting, washing, grading, gutting, and weighing.
- Secondary Processing- Otherwise named value added processing involves turning primary processed foods into other food products, possibly mixing with other ingredients. Examples in salmon processing include: smoking, canning, cooking, and drying.
In the Blue Sector VR app the user will have the chance to try typical workplace tasks in a primary processing factory.
Stages of Primary Processing
Stages of Primary Processing
Bleeding- Bleeding of the salmon involves stunning by a blow to the head followed very shortly afterwards by cutting of the gills to remove blood from the fish's muscles. It is a necessary step for improving the quality of the fillet and preventing spoilage by bacteria. The manual bleeding activity of the "Blue Sector VR" app simulates the process for when the fish are too large for the normal machine or when the machine has failed.
Gutting- The guts of the fish are taken out of the belly cavity. In salmon factories this is often done by BAADER machines. Some models of this machine can gut up to 25 fish a minute and automatically inspect them for quality.
Quality Assurance- The main goal of quality control is to ensure a uniform product is produced which meets the market standards. There are many methods of carrying this out across the whole production cycle of the salmon. The "Blue Sector VR" app simulates one possible scenario, manual checking of the gutting stage to ensure that each fish has been gutted adequately.
Grading- The salmon are graded and sorted into groups by size, weight and quality. The three categories are superior, ordinary, and production. Characteristics such as scale loss, open sores, bleeding due to lice bites, faulty cutting and deformities contribute to the category judgement. In the "Blue Sector VR" app the user will be simulating a grading task where the fish are sorted based on their condition, primarily green and red spots on their scales.
Packing- The salmon are generally packed in ice within polystyrene boxes for transport all over the world.
