Russia’s Federal Quality System, or Roskachestvo, and the Federal Agency on Regulating and Metrology has introduced improved quality standards for salmon roe (also known as red caviar).
The new specifications include upping the maximum allowable content of juice in salmon roe to five percent of the mass. In the past, this parameter had not been regulated. The maximum allowable content of salt has been decreased from seven percent to five percent of the mass, which, as the regulators said, must result in enhancing of freshness of the roe sold through retail chains.
Furthermore, it is now the responsibility of the producer to indicate on its packaging which kind of fish was used in production. Supervisory authorities will use a DNA control to trace the origin of salmon roe in retail to ensure processors are abiding by the new rules.
The new standards go into effect in a trial mode from 1 March, 2018, to 1 March, 2021.
In the past, Russian processors have used various kinds of fish to produce red caviar, including humpback salmon, dog salmon, silversides, trout, and red salmon. That has resulted in a wide spectrum in product quality, with unscrupulous processors mixing in roe from cheaper fish to reduce costs and increase profitability.
Prices for salmon roe in Russia have increased more than three-fold in the last five years, according to a research by the Rybset Agency. In 2017 alone, prices rose more than 50 percent, Fish Union data revealed.
Ilya Shestakov, the head of Russia’s Federal Agency for Fisheries, recently said the increase has been caused by changes in business relations between the catching, processing, and retailing sectors.
