Visit to a Fish Processing Factory

Today as part of my work, really it was more of a learning experience for me, I had a tour of a fish processing factory. This factory takes catfish raised in captivity in the Mekong Delta and processes them into frozen fillets for mainly the American market but also for South America and Europe. It was extremely interesting and also stomach turning, as I got to walk through the whole factory and see every stage of production.

 1. Conveyor belts move buckets of fish from boats into the factory.

 2. Fish enter the filleting room.

 3. Workers "fillet" the fish, cutting away the head, tail and spine. They are paid based on how many fish they fillet and were working with amazing speed. My supervisor told me that a worker in a factory like this will earn from 2,450,000 VND ($115) to 5,000,000 VND ($236) a month based on how much fish they process and how much fish is exported. This is within the average range of a salary in Vietnam.

 4. Workers further trim the fillets, removing skin, fat etc. They are also paid based on how much fish they clean.

 5. Fillets are checked for quality and imperfections are removed.

 6. Fillets are sorted into "yellow" and "white" as white fillets are more expensive.

 7. Fillets are frozen in a flash freezer within twenty minutes.

8. The final product! Fillets are packaged directly for supermarkets or packed bulk for restaurants. Our guide told us that it takes 80 kgs of fresh fish to produce 40 kgs of frozen fillets but that the other parts of the fish will be used by other factories to make other products.

The experience was extremely eye opening because even though I had an idea of how food processing and factories functioned it was very different to walk through the whole process. I think one of my biggest reflections after this trip was how strange our world food system really is - it is crazy to think of all that fish that is frozen and shipped across the ocean to American supermarkets.