You go to the supermarket and decide to pick up a couple of fish fillets for dinner. What you may not realize is that you will actually be paying for a third fillet. This is because processing fillets generates an enormous amount of waste in the form of by-products: bones, scales, heads, skin, fins, and ultimately a quantity of meat.
Researchers at West Virginia University are working to recover that meat protein and turn the waste into additional revenue for fish producers. “Let’s say you start with 100 pounds of unprocessed fish,” begins Jacek Jaczynski, assistant professor of animal and veterinary sciences, “By the time the fillets have been extracted, you have 30 pounds of processed fish for the market and 70 pounds of waste, including considerable meat, that heads straight into the landfill.”
By recognizing a problem with significant economic and environmental repercussions, Jaczynski and his research team are working to develop a system that would allow producers to separate by-products into three marketable substances. “After being run through our system, we have recovered meat proteins that can be used in value-added food products, lipids, such as fish oil that are high in Omega-3 fatty acids and used in dietary supplements, and, for lack of a better term, ‘junk’ that’s high in protein and minerals and can be used as animal feed,” Jaczynski explains.
The process has five stages. First, the by-products are homogenized and mixed with water. Then the pH of the fluid is changed slightly to put the meat proteins into a solution with the water. The substance is then separated into three phases, the protein solution, fats and lipids, and “the junk.” After the three components are separated, the pH of the protein solution is changed again, allowing the now fat-free meat solids to form.
The results are environmentally sound. “Previously, you couldn’t use too much fish meal in animal feed because the meat would end up smelling like fish because of the fats and oils. The ‘junk’ in this case doesn’t have any fat or oil in it, just proteins and minerals,” Jaczynski explained, “We can also use the same water again with new batches, which conserves that resource.”
Jaczynski is moving on to new phases of research on the project. He’s working with WVU’s Office of Technology Transfer to establish a dedicated laboratory space for the full working model of the protein recovery system, and he’s talking with producers to establish pilot systems in their enterprises.
His collaborators on the project include research assistant Sarah Beemer, Yi-Chen Chen, a post-doctoral fellow, Latif Taskaya, a visiting scholar from Turkey, and Ken Semmens, aquaculture specialist with the WVU Extension Service.
Written by David Welsh of the WVU Davis College of Agriculture, Forestry, and Consumer Sciences
Posted by Matt Livengood on January 4, 2007 at 2:11 pm in the following categories: Technology Transfer
