Acronym NA
Category
Aquaculture
Title Forbrukeroppfatninger av kvaliteten på fersk fisk - Consumer perceptions of the quality of fresh fish Programme National Programme
Instrument (FP6)
Contact Type (FP7)
Strand (Interreg)
NA
Theme (FP7)
Activity Area (FP6)
Regional Area (Interreg)
Action (COST)
NA
Specific Programme (FP7)
NA
Funding source National Coordinator Jens Østli Coordinator email jens.ostli@nofima.no
Coordinator institution
NOFIMA - Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (Norway)
Institutions involved
NA
Start year 2008 End year 2010 Funding (€) € 32,631 Website https://www.fhf.no/prosjekter/prosjektbasen/900107/ Summary "There have been a number of articles in the media in recent years that question the quality of the fresh fish that Norwegian consumers are offered through the grocery trade. It has not only been about varying quality, but equally about how to measure the quality of the products in the fish counter. The discussion could be summarized as follows: 1. What conditions apply for the individual instrumental measurement method to be said to reflect the correct quality objective? 2. To what extent can one say that one or two samples can be said to be representative? Such quality measures can typically be bacterial content, content component TMA (which gives off the smell of rotten fish), colour and odour changes, etc. Furthermore, the fish quality regulations contain provisions on absolute limits for when products are no longer suitable for consumption. The problem is that current measurement methods primarily measure the deterioration of the product, and not the quality of the product related to the consumer's perception of the product, what can be called the eating quality. When it comes to the consumer's experience of fresh fish quality, there are few studies to refer to and references from work done in the 1980s are used frequently today. Some studies indicate that there is not a common perception of what is the right or acceptable quality of the seafood you buy. This means that there may be different perceptions of acceptable quality depending on, for example, place of residence, age, experience, etc. The quality development or quality reduction that occurs from capture to disposal is highly dependent on the products' storage temperature, and this is known to vary from capture to consumption. It was therefore important to carry out the project using different storage temperatures.
The aim of this project was to see which measurement methods for fresh fish coincide to the greatest extent possible with consumers' assessment of the same fish. Fresh cod fillet was chosen as sample material. A total of 236 consumers on Ås and in Tromsø tasted fresh cod fillets stored at 6 different combinations of time and temperature on the same day. The fillet from the same batch was analyzed on the same day using sensory profiling, microbiology, fillet index, near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and some chemical methods.
The project must be described as preliminary and exploratory because there is a limited number of fillet samples that can be analyzed on the same day with technical/sensory methods and are also assessed by consumers. The lesson we draw from the project results is that it seems possible to develop some of the measurement methods so that they coincide with consumers' perceptions of quality. Filet index and NIR came out best. Both methods are also fast and practically applicable. However, there is still a lot of research and development work to be done before concrete recommendations on method selection can be made."
Keywords
Process efficiency;
Fish;
Monitoring;
Fish quality;
Market;
Cod;
Food safety;
Fish products;
Marine Region
41
Norwegian Sea (27.IIa)
42
Barents Sea (27.I)
2
Marine Region Map
