PROCESSING

QUALITY

HEN you cook fish—whether you fry, boil, bake or. broil it
—do you ever. wonder how the wheels of Saskatchewan’s
_ fishing industry go round? |

_ Where are Saskatchewan fish caught for commercial use? How
are those round or frozen fish rushed from the north to your dinner
table? Perhaps you sometimes wonder how those appetizing fillets
you buy at the corner store or at your co-op are processed?

In the past, difficulties of preservation and transportation limited
the distribution of fresh fish largely to coastal areas. Inlanders had to
be content with salt fish.

Today this is changed. We have an-abundance of high quality
fish in our province. Whitefish, trout, pickerel, northern pike, tullibee,
sturgeon, goldeyes and perch are found in the 13,725 square miles of
lakes and rivers in Saskatchewan. Methods have been developed
whereby people living hundreds of miles from the deep, cool northern
lakes can get fish as fine and tasty as if they had just caught it them-
selves on the shores of Lac la Ronge or Beaver Lake.

Saskatchewan's socially-owned fish filleting plants, where speed
and sanitation are the watchwords, use the modern method of food
preservation, quick freezing, and the modern method of transportation,
air, to supply both local and American households with a high quality
fish product as fresh as the moment it was caught in the fisherman’s
net.

When the newly-caught whitefish arrives at the filleting plants,
it is started on the production line immediately, to emerge shortly after
as gleaming white fillets ready for cooking. Placed in huge galvan-
ized vats where ice water constantly pours over it, the whitefish

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