Canning and Fish Packaging Technology

Unit 4 - Thermal process for canned foods

4.10.3.Maintaining sterile conditions during plant operation
Contamination of microorganisms can only be excluded by designing the plant efficiently, adopting sound hygienic engineering principles and maintaining rigorous regimes of control to ensure that the plant is operated properly. Hygiene is paramount in all considerations of design. The design should take three main considerations into account.

• The plant processing area must allow effective sanitization and even sterilization before the start up.
• It must completely isolate the product from surrounding environment and the operating personnel.
• The product must flow without any risk that material could lodge during production so at to give rise to microbial growth.

At present, aseptic packaging is adopted for liquids and thick liquids. With recent developments, it is possible to sterilize solids of size 1 to 3 cm in liquids or thick liquids using modern, well designed equipments. Even though it is not possible produce traditional type canned fish products using these systems, it may be possible aseptically packed curry or tomato sauce products containing small sized fish meat without bones and skin.