26. The Chairman recalled that the 22nd Session of the CAC adopted the Draft Guidelines at Step 5 and agreed that the sensory evaluation of cephalopods should be considered in view in their importance in international trade, and that the Proposed Draft Section for Training was circulated for comments at Step 3. In order to facilitate deliberation, it was proposed to establish an ad hoc Working Group.
27. The Working Group was asked to consider the comments received in writing and made during the general discussion, which reflected the following concerns related to the title, the scope and other parts of the document, in particular: a) the guidelines should be usable by industry as well as food inspectors, b) the title should reflect that sensory analysis was intended to detect defects, c) in general the document was too prescriptive, especially descriptions of training procedures and procedures for harmonization, and e) the training section and the rest of the Guidelines should be advanced to the same Step of the Procedure.
28. The Committee agreed to specify in the scope that the guidelines were intended for use by industry as well as regulatory authorities and that emphasis was on laboratory facilities although in practice evaluation was carried out at other locations in the field. It was recognized that industry analysis emphasized grading while regulatory analysis focused on fitness for consumption; it should be made explicit that the document applied to any fish standard referring to decomposition; the details provided in some sections should be removed and the description of facilities should be more conceptual. Some delegations expressed their concern that the training section might be too prescriptive in a document which would be used as a reference in international trade, as training programmes and methods differed among member countries.
29. The Chairman of the Working Group, Dr. George Hoskin (USA), informed the Committee that the group had reached consensus on the main issues identified in the general discussion and introduced a revised document, incorporating the section on training. The Committee considered the revised text section by section and agreed to the following amendments.
30. The title of the document was changed to “Draft Guidelines for the Sensory Evaluation of Fish and Shelfish in Laboratories” in order to reflect its contents more accurately. Inspection Laboratories were renamed as “Laboratories for Sensory Evaluation”. The document was shortened since unnecessary specifics were taken out but the main parts of the text were kept unchanged as much as possible. In Section 3.3 Cooking, it was agreed to insert the wording of the Standard for Quick Frozen Fish Fillets.
31. The Committee agreed that the Table of Attributes was a good basis for assessment but should not be exhaustive as the essential requirement was that analysts should be properly trained. The proposal from Spain on cephalopods was included into the table, and a reference to “sour” was added in that section. The presence of «ink» was questioned and the Committee agreed that it could be taken out since there was no definiton of “ink”.
32. The Committee agreed that the sections on training should include the screening of assessors as to several essential attributes, and that emphasis should be put on regular recalibration of analysts, to ensure that the performance and consistency of analytic decisions was maintained. Following a question concerning the use of the existing ISO standard on sensory evaluation in relation to the current text, the Committee noted that the Guidelines were more specific in their scope and purpose but could be used in addition to the existing ISO document, which concerned sensory evaluation in general.
33. The Committee agreed that some further reorganization within the sections would be helpful, and in particular moving Table 1 (Attributes) into Annex 1, including the sections on a training course in Annex III and combining all literature references into a single section at the end of the document. The Committee expressed its appreciation to Dr. Hoskin and to the members of the Working Group for their excellent work, and recognizing that the document was significantly improved, agreed that part one on Sensory Evaluation and part two on the Training of Assessors could be merged into a final document.
Status of the Draft Guidelines for the Sensory Evaluation of Fish and Shelfish in Laboratories
34. The Committee agreed to advance part one of the document on Sensory Evaluation to the Commission for adoption at Step 8 and part two on the Training of Assessors to Step 5 with a recommendation to the Commission to omit Steps 6 and 7 and to adopt it at Step 8 of the Procedure (see Appendix II).
