日本語　　

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Fish meat preservation

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This project is new.
We found a technique how to slaughter fish under the best conditions, leading to a prolonged freshness of fish meat. An extra process was added prior to slaughtering. The process is simple and only requires for several minutes. Fish freshness has been evaluated by the effective period of rigor mortis.

Fish meat could maintain its freshness tree times longer than the regular slaughtering method (Fig.1).

The key of this method is to make fish sedated by merely regulating the environmental conditions of fish. When fish was left in the air after catching, the length of rigor mortis after death is normally short. If fish is slaughtered instantly by destructing the spinal bulb, the length of rigor mortis becomes longer. It is important to keep fish calm until slaughtering.

Fish treated is still in rigor mortis (on the left), but fish not-treated has already been out of such condition (on the right) after 24 hours.

We have been studying the mechanism of this process, and we think it is related on the secretion or production of opioid peptides in the nervous system. It is very important to make fish sedated before slaughtering, and the presence of opioid peptides is essential to make such conditions in fish.

Our recent research pointed that the same technique can be applied to other marine animals, such as sea urchin, shrimp, abalone et al.

We think this will help the fresh fish trading in the world. We are now looking for sponsers for this project to make the technique popular in the world.