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Wild Catch Fishing - Value Adding of a product

Cate Bell

K & C Fisheries, Sale

The Macquarie Dictionary I used to find the definition of the topic I was to speak on today

VALUE Exchange Usefulness Price Respect Worth

ADD Unit/join to increase the number quality size importance

PRODUCT a thing produced by any action or by labor effect/result

Premium Complement Commodity

When I started my married life as a fisherman’s wife I would take my hammer and tin of nails to work each morning to mend wooden crate that we packed our fish into to take to the Sale railway station and send to Melbourne to be picked up a Spencer street station by the agent for him to sell at the fresh fish market

What a long way we have come since then-we now take at least 2 ton of ice each day to make ice slurry to carry the catch home in. Each time you do something to the product you value add to it –ice on the fish on the boat is that action

Quality Assurance=Good house keeping- food processing Audits or HACCP Based.

Now to the sector of the fishing industry that I work in as a Bay/Inlet fisherman in the Gippsland lakes Victoria inland fisherman in NSW K & C fisheries has worked with the handsome and lovely CARP for the last 20 years. Because they are seen as the; last gasp of any food chain we work hard to make sure that any product that comes out of our factory is of the highest standard that we can achieve at all times. The world parity price for Carp is only 41cents????? Per kg so what we do we have to do it the smartest way to make it all work.

Carp have be around for a very long time- there are painting and carving of them dating back to BC times and they came to Australia as one of the first fleeter and in Sydney and Adelaide Botanical gardens quite happily for many years. In the early sixties they were taken to dams in Boolarra in Gippsland, then a large flood came and spread them far and wide and they took to the waterways quite well.

Good house keeping, Quality food safe HACCP are all key words used when talking about Value adding food.

At the first we started with bait to the Crayfish industry its just bait no need to look after it to well we were told why take ice it only bait why put it in a box just bait won’t pay for all that extra stuff but as time went on we found that our customers base was growing and people were wanting are bait as it didn’t smell in there freezers,it was easy to handle and pack into containers lasted longer wasjust good Bait

Human Consumption

The Melbourne fish market takes about 1-2 tons a week depending on what orders they have for that week,the carp are caught on Monday morning and then taken to Melbourne well iced and sold by 4 am on Tuesday.

Fertilizer

Here again quality is the key word as it is sold as an organic fertilizer the least action taken they have to take makes their product better Charlie Carp/Oceans Australis fertilizers are our clients as they know that each time they order they are going to get the same quality.

Pet Food

Again the quality had to be of the highest standard K & C Fisheries work with Uncle Ben’s Australia for many years getting the carp into there lines of product,the cats were hard taste tester they made food for them and gave sample to the CATS we had to wait each feeding time to see what they liked

When we applied for our Export License we found that many of the requirements need to supply UBA were the same so it was easy to make the factory export standard so now all fish handled in the factory are to export standard. We Exported to Europe and the Middle east. Fillets to Australian Abalone for fish kekie sprinkle for noodle and tinned filets for Export.

The skins make beautiful leather .

Bird and other fish make no distinction between small fish when they are hungry and the carp are becoming a food sauce to many wading birds and large predator fish EG Murray cod and perch. So when you see a Carp next time smile as the smart clean and lovely fish has a place in the food chain like the rest of the fish??.

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