THINGS THEY DON’T TELL YOU ABOUT FISH SAUCE (BUDU) FERMENTATION

In the first place let us get a few things straight. Fish sauce fermentation is the traditional fermentation of many countries, especially those in South East Asian countries. It is a grave error to regard the fish fermentation as the traditional right or heritage of a particular country or state.
According to Wikipedia the Romans have been known to produce fish sauce called garum as part of their Greco Roman cuisine!!. The famous Lea Perrin sauce in typical British culinary is a fish sauce. The ingredients of a traditional bottle of Worcestershire sauce sold in the UK as "The Original & Genuine Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce" are malt vinegar (from barley), spirit vinegar, molasses, sugar, salt, anchovies tamarind extract, onions, garlic, spice, and flavouring. The "spice, and flavouring" is believed to include cloves soy sauce, lemons, pickles and peppers.
I just can’t help laughing how emotional some readers are in claiming the “rights” to the fish sauce without doing research into the origin and diversity of fish sauce. Sometimes blind ignorance can have its place in this country!
While the use of fish sauce or budu is quite limited in Malaysia, this is not the case in Thailand or Vietnam where the fish sauce is almost in everything and regarded as the Magic elixir in their cooking. Fish sauce made in Thailand is easily available on the supermarket shelves that cater for Asian cooking. The bottled fish sauce looked very attractive especially with their golden brown colour, beautifully labeled and subjected to perfect advertising and marketing strategies that make the product successful.
When you buy a bottle of fish sauce in the market, the sauce looks golden brown and appealing. Everything is so hygienic and sanitary that you would not be able to appreciate how the fish sauce was manufactured. Gladly you will buy the bottle and use it frequently in cooking dishes to your family delight at the dinner table.
Little do you suspect that what you are enjoying is merely a rotting broth of decomposing fish with the added nutritional values contributed by flies and maggots!
There are certain things they will not tell or show you about fish sauce fermentation. Zimmerman of Bizarre Foods would probably faint or go into prolonged coma if he witness up close and personal how fish sauce are produced.
Coupled to this bottled product advertising approach the fish sauce companies make great effort to prove the sanitary quality of the production facilities especially in stressing:
1 The use of fresh fish or anchovies to be used as the fermentation substrate
2 Clean and hygienic bottling facilities
3 Use of scientific quality control such as GMP and HACCP and the use of advance analytical laboratories to monitor the production especially in downstream activities
What is not shown is the true facts of how the fish sauce is really fermented. They only show you the nice sanitized end products. They don’t show you the dirt and the grime of the fish sauce fermentation! (This is akin to the presentable chicken all clean and wrapped in the butchery area of the supermarket. You don’t see the slaughter! You don’t see the blood!)
Let us get the facts straight! Let us visit the “ground zero” of fish sauce fermentation!
1Fish sauce fermentation is a mixed culture fermentation which involves the action of multitudes of microorganisms
2 Fish sauce fermentation is still basically traditional fermentation even though it might be industrialized
3 The fermentation vats for fish sauce fermentation are often ceramic vats cement vats or even PVC vats operated in batch operations
4 The fermentation is natural and septic and occur over periods of months
5 There is poor quality or hygienic control during the fish sauce fermentation in the vats
6 The fish are left to rot and decompose over long periods of times under high concentrations of salts. At the end of the period the salt would have sucked out the water from the fish entrails or tissues
7 Periodically the vats are left open to expose it to air and sunlight to enhance fermentation or decomposition
8 Its not uncommon to see flies and maggots or larvae breeding in the vat while the fish sauce is fermenting. Urgghhh! It stinks! Its visually repulsive!
I often wonder how some of these fish sauce are GMP or HACCP compliance ?





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JUST MY THOUGHTS ON STARTING FISH SAUCE OR BUDU FERMENTATION INDUSTRY

Most people often have the idea of commercialization of the fish sauce fermentation from the level of a small cottage industry to a large manufacturing concern. They seem to think that the whole process of translation from a cottage to a large fermentation industry is smooth sailing. In reality it is more complex not only at the level of increasing the scale of manufacturing the budu fermentation but to the level of increasing the market demand and successful marketing.

I always feel very sad when I see some new ventures or projects failed. Such failures will leave very devastating impacts on the investors or entrepreneurs. Lots of investments in terms of money, energy and hope will be thrown into the wind. At the same time I just can’t help feeling very angry and disappointed with these entrepreneurs. Had they done proper studies on the technical and economic viability of the projects, such catastrophes could have been avoided. Maybe they do not listen to advice or worst they listened to the ‘wrong advice’.

THE BUSINESS PLAN
They should have their business plan on paper first. Business plans are decision-making tools. There is no fixed content for a business plan. Rather the content and format of the business plan is determined by the goals and audience. A business plan should contain whatever information is needed to decide whether or not to pursue a goal. They should not be rushing into the projects without doing proper studies and background research.

There are many questions that need to be answered before embarking on such projects. It is very important at this early stage to be critical of the project and to find what possibly could go wrong rather than dreaming that the project will be smooth sailing and guaranteed to succeed.

During this stage of planning ‘allowances’ must be made for contingencies or unexpected changes.

Preparing a business plan draws on a wide range of knowledge from many different business disciplines: finance, human resource management, intellectual property management, supply chain management, operations management and marketing among others..

It can be helpful to view the business plan as a collection of sub-plans, one for each of the main business disciplines.[

If the proposed project failed on paper then high chances are that the business will fail in reality. At least failing on paper would not incur much collateral damages such as costs of investments.

CHARACTERISTICS OF FISH SAUCE INDUSTRY

Fish sauce fermentation is a traditional food fermentation industry. It is often carried out on small scale or the backyard industry. Very few of the fish sauce industries are carried out at industrial scale in Thailand. Thailand is the major global producer for fish sauce.

The key element in this industry is the availability of fishes which are used as the substrate for fermentation. Different countries or manufacturers use different type of fish for the fish sauce fermentation

With the stock of fish dwindling down, it is risky at present to carry out fish sauce fermentation, unless you are willing to go for alternative supply of cheaper fishes. There was a time years ago when anchovies used for fish sauce fermentation is plenty and cheap. During those days the anchovies are the poor man’s diet. But not now!. Anchovies are expensive and even the poor man can’t afford it

In the economics of fish sauce fermentation it is important that the industry is run continuously and efficiently to be viable. We cannot have most of the times workers and machines being idle.



TECHNOLOGY OF PRODUCING FISH SAUCE
In Malaysia making fish sauce is mainly in the realms of small scale cottage industries. Production is viable to service local or regional demands. The method of fish sauce produced by these small cottage industries is often not geared for high volume production.

1 Fermentation Technology is passive
2 Non mechanized or automated
3 More of free time industries
4 Fermentation is too long from six months to more than a year

ECONOMY OF SCALE
One of the hallmarks of business of manufacturing is to produce the products at the lowest cost while still making profits. Lowering the price will make it attractive to consumers and reduce or eliminate competitors of the same products. This can only be achieved if the volume of production is higher thus the cost of producing the unit price will be lowered. In fermentation this would mean involving bigger fermentation capacity which is not normally achieved in small cottage industries

THE SUCCESS OF EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON MARKETING
Just how popular are the fish sauce? In Malaysia, fish sauce or budu are only highly regarded by people in the East coast or originating from East coast. Will their number be sufficient to make the business of fish sauce fermentation economically viable?

As fish sauce is an acquired taste it might be difficult to penetrate the European countries or United States. These countries too are very stringent regarding the standards and quality of how the sauce is manufactured. I doubt many will pass through the stringent barriers of GMP, HACCP and QC control. It should be clean and free of possible pathogens

PRODUCT POTENTIAL?

Yes! Fish sauce is an excellent product and has potential to succeed in global market. However, in order to succeed there need to be visible improvements in the production process, packaging and marketing




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FISH SAUCE FERMENTATION (BUDU FERMENTATION)

PICTURE TAKEN FROM WWW.KOSMO.COM.MY)
I have recently come across this interesting write up in the local paper KOSMO (www.kosmo.com.my) dated 2 June 2009 about a local entrepreneur getting involved in fish sauce fermentation or Budu fermentation.

Budu is a fish sauce fermentation which basically uses anchovies as the main fish for the fermentation. The fish sauce is very popular or almost idolized by the people from the state of Kelantan and Trengganu.



The fermentation process basically involves the adding of certain proportion of salt to water to the fish in the fermenting vat. Depending on the producer the budu fermentation might take up to a few months.

The quality of the fish sauce depends on a lot of factors such as the type of fish being used, the proportion of salt being used, duration of fermentation and of course the acidity of the fermentation process. There are of course variations in the recipes for budu fermentation depending on each manufacturer

I find this article to be interesting because:

1 It is the first grand attempt to produce budu on a large or industrial scale using large fermentation tanks.


According to the article the initial fermentation were carried out in in cement tanks or fibre glass tanks. There are about 20 fibre glass tanks 1.2 metre high and 2 metres wide.

At the end of about 6 month fermentation, the fermented fish sauce are kept in containers as shown below before being processed and bottled up


2 Since the budu fermentation is relying upon the supply of anchovies the process of fermentation could only be carried out between June to November when the anchovies are in abundant supply. From December to May are for cooking filtering and bottling the budu sauce




DISCUSSIONS

Budu is one of the diversity of fish sauces fermented or produced in the region such as Thailand and Vietnam. The basic fermentation process is the same all though there could be variations in the type of fishes used and the recipes followed.

In general budu is more a cottage industry and supplies the local consumption

Attempts to scale up the fermentation process to industrial scale are often hampered by:

1) Lack of demand for the products as budu is an acquired taste
2) Competition from similar products produced by other countries
3) Budu is considered a slow and passive fermentation process which technically would not fit the criteria of industrial fermentation
4) The supply of anchovies is seasonal and limited and the fish is widely used in everyday cooking making it costly to produce budu
5) In most of the cottage industries fermentation, GMP and HACCP are very difficult to be adhered to

The viability of budu and its transformation into a large scale industry need to be properly studied before going all out.

We need to know important data such as:
1 What are the rate limiting steps in the budu fermentation industries
2 Better fermentor or bioreactor design for budu fermentation
3 To carry out better marketing and sales plan to convince the public
4 Carry further scientific research to improve the quality of budu sauce
5 Need better GMP and HACCP established procedures
6 Consistency and high quality in the final product especially using SOP

QUALITY CONTROL AND SURVIVAL OF THE BUDU FERMENTATION INDUSTRY

As previously mentioned the budu or fish sauce is not the sole proprietary rights of Malaysian budu makers. There are similar products produced by Thailand, Vietnam and even Philipines. If the budu fermentation industry is to survive and expand it must be able to compete with the other fish sauce manufacturers. Sadly to say in this aspect our budu fermentation industries are not ready to compete with the budu global market. They need to improve and be competitive and be at par with the other countries fish sauce industries.

It doesnt take a lot of convincing where we are by just visiting a few of the budu industries to see where we are. Reality bites!

One of the most important thing in the budu industry is not so much as increasing the volume of production but to bring real QC or qualuty control of international standards into our budu industries.

The subject of QC covers every aspect of budu fermentation right up from the upstream activities to the downstream processing when the budu is bottled or packed. In the application of QC in the budu industries we cannot rely on the art of budu fermentation and the skill acquired from father to son alone. We have to go technological and scientific in our approach. There is no such thing as half hearted effort. It must be an all out change for Quality

Quality control starts with the step of getting the substrate of the fermentation itself, ie the fish or anchovies. For high quality budu you need to use the best, the freshest or the highest quality anchovies.

The manufacturing process facilities of the budu fermentation must be very hygienic and comply with good manufacturing practice (GMP). Sanitation standard of the place must be of the highest standard and in no way the manufacturing facilities look like a dump or a workshop!Every component of the manufacturing process which includes the machines, equipments and even the budu fermentors must be GMP approved. Just building a few fire glass fermentation tanks or concrete tanks would not be sufficient to convince

In the GMP of budu fermentation it is of utmost importance that things like personal hygiene of workers be considered. There should not be any free acess of pests or rodents or any unwanted visitors that might find its way into the premise or even the fermentation vats. The quality of water used in the fermentation must be monitored. Cleaning and washings including the use of disinfection of the floor and facilities should be carried out regularly. Waste disposal issues must be addressed.

Strict quality control programme must be implemented so as not to allow products of suspected quality to go through

Since budu is a food and a popular one too, the international food standard or (CODEX), HACCP must be followed. Only then can we be assured that the industry has met international standard and can face global market


The quality of the final product must be assured by quality control.This is important as then our customer will feel safe and reassured. In view of this the QC department must ensure that the product comply with the requirements of the various regulating bodies such as the ministry of health. The QC lab must be equipped with the right equipment and qualified staff to carry this work













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