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Small Fish and Food Security: Towards innovative integration of fish in African food systems to improve nutrition (SmallFishFood)

09/2018-08/2021

This third-party funded project is conducted in the framework of the BfR research programme on exposure estimation and assessment of biological risks

BMEL support programme: ERA-Net LEAP AGRI

BLE grant number: 323-06.01-03-2817LEAP06

Project homepage:  -

Project description

This project is part of the ERA-net LEAP-Agri project SmallFishFood, which performed by a multidisciplinary consortium of various partner institutions from Norway, the Netherlands, Ghana, Germany, Kenya and Uganda. It deals with the improvement along the supply chains of processed small fish from the capture fisheries in Ghana, Uganda and Kenya. The goals are the

• Identification and quantification of the current pattern of production and distribution of small fish as food and feed;
• Description of patterns of harvest, marketing and utilization of small fish and how this food resource contributes to food and nutrition security in these countries;
• Improvement of production and processing to achieve higher quality and safety as well as longer shelf life of the food products; and
• Communication of improvements along the supply chains.

In this project, the University of Ghana, in collaboration with other consortium partners, will improve the recording processes of small-scale fisheries for small fish. Small fish are tracked along the flow of goods from catch, through processing, to transport, all the way to the consumer, to record and quantify in detail the volume flows and food losses. Based on this quantification, models will be used in order to transfer the findings to other product chains of small fish.

The Ghanaian Food Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, in collaboration with other consortium partners, will explore and improve the marketing, processing, packaging and shelf-life of processed small fish. Special focus will be on improving the drying of small fish.

The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment will analyse samples of processed small fish along the supply chain for microbiological food safety and develop recommendations to increase the food safety of these products.

Partners

• University of Bergen (Norwegen, Koordination)
• Institute of Marine Research (Norwegen)
• University of Ghana (Ghana)
• Council for Scienitfic and Industrial Research - Food Research Institute (Uganda)
• University of Amsterdam (Niederlande)
• Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI, Kenia)

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