Category: News

The food tradition is a large part of the image of the country and the nation, as it reflects culture and history and is marked by time and nature. The food experience is an integral part of the lives of tourists wherever they go, whether it is the main purpose of the trip or not.

In the Nordic countries, there is a great awakening to the value of local food production and cuisine for both locals and foreign visitors. At the same time, increased emphasis is placed on sustainability in food production and tourism, so that a balance between growth and protection is maintained. In this context, questions arise as to how driving forces such as climate change and consumer behavior shape decisions that promote greater sustainability and innovation in the food production and tourism of the future. A Nordic working group chaired by Iceland in the Nordic Council of Ministers will try to answer these questions.

Icelandic Food Resources under the auspices of the Ministry of Industry and Innovation leads the project in collaboration with the Icelandic Travel Cluster and Matís and enjoys the assistance of Icelandic experts. Nordic participants in the project come from Norway, Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Åland and Sweden. Strong co-operation, which has already begun, will seek to enhance the competitiveness of the Nordic countries and support policy-making on the use of local foods in tourism, based on a balance between demand and environmental protection. The project lasts for 3 years, from 2019-2021.

Information about the project will be available in the coming months on the website of Matarauður Íslands. It will be possible to access information about the project, progress and results.

Under the Icelandic Presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers, the focus is on young people, the sea and sustainable tourism. Under the auspices of sustainable tourism are in addition to the above project; tourism and nature conservation and the digitalisation of tourism.

The Emblu Prize is a Nordic food prize, but this time it will be presented at Harpa in Reykjavík on 1 June in connection with the Nordic Chefs' Congress. The prize is intended to increase visibility and raise public interest in the Nordic food tradition and food produced in the Nordic countries. The Emblem Prize is awarded every two years and was first presented in Copenhagen in 2017. The prize is awarded by a Nordic farmers' organization with the support of the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Nominations were launched in early March on the website www.emblafoodawards.com but the deadline for registering nominations is 31 March next. Nominations are collected in all the Nordic countries, but everyone can nominate a representative from their own country. Participation is free. A three-member jury in each country decides who will be nominated as each country's representative.

There are seven award categories for the Emblu Prize:

Nordic raw material producer 2019
The prize will be awarded to a farmer, fisherman, hunter, collector, etc. which stands for high quality ingredients. Who uses his cultural and natural roots in the Nordic countries and who himself produces, fishes or collects the raw material.

Nordic Food Entrepreneur 2019
Provided to an individual, company or organization that has developed a new approach with broad appeal and marketing potential and that is often based on old traditions.

Nordic Food Craftsman 2019
The prize will be awarded to a food craftsman who has developed a unique quality product based on Nordic ingredients and methods.

Food journalist / Dissemination of food 2019
Awarded to an individual, narrator, medium or publication who carries the fame of Nordic food culture.

Nordic Award for Food for Many 2019
Awarded to a person or organization who has done a lot of work to increase the quality and promote Nordic food culture in public meals.

Nordic food destination 2019
Provided to an organization, institution or community that has united raw material producers, restaurants and others involved in promoting a particular place through food culture, collaboration and collaboration.

Nordic Prize for Food for Children and Young People 2019
The prize will be awarded to an individual or organization that has developed an idea or ideology that significantly contributes to increasing the knowledge and skills of future generations regarding Nordic food and food culture.

You can register participants in Embla until March 31st. Registration is simple and quick on the website www.emblafoodawards.com. There you can also learn more about the prizes and their origins.

A co-operation forum on Matvælalandið Ísland will hold a conference on the uniqueness of Icelandic food production on Wednesday 10 April at 10-12 at Hilton Hotel Nordica.

The title of the conference is What can you be invited to eat? Unique position and competitive advantage in food production and tourism. The conference will discuss the value of the specialty and the challenges that many nations face in their food production. Demands for safe food, gaining a foothold, respect for the environment and resources, improving public health and healthy livestock will have a major impact on food production around the world in the coming years. Food is playing an increasingly important role in people's travel experiences and is therefore an important issue in tourism.

Henk Jan Ormel, Veterinary Adviser at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), discusses the link between food safety and human and animal diseases and how to combat foodborne illness. The uniqueness of Icelandic food production and how to demonstrate it will be discussed, as well as examples of how uniqueness is used in marketing. At the end there will be a panel discussion.

To Matvælalandin stand Industry Association, Icelandic Farmers' Association, Matís, Íslandsstofa, Tourism Association, Association of companies in the fishing industry, Iceland's food resources and University of Iceland .

Here you can register for the conference.

The Strandbúnaður 2019 conference will take place on 21 and 22 March at the Grand Hotel Reykjavík, which is the largest annual forum for all those who work in coastal equipment.

Below is a list of the conference seminars:

• Main currents in coastal equipment: Opportunities for growth
• Processing, transport and marketing of farmed fish
• Challenges and opportunities in shellfish farming in Iceland
• Technological development - Land farming (purchased presentation)
• Technological development - Hafeldi (purchased presentation)
• Environmental and safety issues in aquaculture
• Developments in aquaculture
• Progress in salmon farming
• Algae cultivation in Iceland - Opportunities in the future or today's industry?
• Salmon Farming in the North Atlantic
• Algae Culture Extension Short-course

Jón Árnason, project manager at Matís, will give a talk at the seminar Main currents in coastal equipment: Opportunities for growth entitled Development of aquaculture feed. There he explains the development of feed for farmed fish in the northern hemisphere, with special emphasis on feed for salmon. New raw materials that could provide sufficient feed for the predictable growth that will be needed in aquaculture to meet the increased protein needs of the world in the future will also be discussed.

Sigurjón Arason from Matís will take part in the seminar Processing, transport and marketing of farmed fish. His talk is entitled Processing for death solidification where he points out the importance of everything that affects product quality. The final quality of products depends, among other things, on how the fish goes in and through death control. It will be discussed what is known about these effects and how the process can be managed to achieve the best results. Among other things, the handling of fish and it also matters which product is to be produced, for example whether it is fillets or whole, gutted fish.

The program can be found here.

Jónas R. Viðarsson at Matís says in an interview with Fish news published on March 7, that he believes it is clear that in the end, electronic surveillance of cameras will be the only thing that is enough to prevent discards of fish in the European Fleet.

Four years ago, the European Union approved a ban on discards. Around the same time, it was decided to get a group of professionals to develop methods, acquire knowledge and develop technology to reduce discards in the hope that it could be gradually eliminated. This project, which was named DiscardLess, now finished in February after four years of work.

"This project will be created in connection with the discard ban that is being implemented in Europe," says Jónas R. Viðarsson, professional leader at Matís. "The ban was to be implemented slowly from 2016 until January 1, 2019."

Jónas is a representative of one of four Icelandic companies that participated in the DiscardLess project. In addition to Matís, Marel, Hampiðjan and SkipaSýn participated, as well as a subsidiary of SkipaSýn in Poland.

Nothing has changed

Jónas says that the European Union's ban on dumping has in fact fallen through. The goals have not been achieved. Instead of legal discarding, which was previously authorized up to a certain point but with a registration obligation, there is presumably an illegal discarding where nothing is registered and therefore nothing is known about its scope anymore.

"Nothing has changed," says Jónas. "It is not an undesirable force to come ashore now, which presumably means that what was registered discards is just illegal discards today. The authorities have really decided to put only the binoculars in front of the blind eye. ”In reality, they can do little else about what has happened.

"The only reality is that while fishermen are opposed to the ban and the control is not better, there is a discard. The big conclusion is that this is not working. They have been implementing this for four years and there is very little that is coming out of this, "says Jónas.

Numerous solutions

Nevertheless, the DiscardLess project has produced a number of suggestions and solutions that should be able to help reduce discards. On the one hand, they aim to avoid catching unwanted catches and, on the other hand, to extract valuables from the catches that cannot be avoided.

Most of these ideas, however, seem to be difficult to implement, as the situation is very different from what we know here.

"There is always a snag on them somewhere. Some things are difficult, or seem to be, financially viable. We came up with, among other things, three-dimensional drawings of boats and ships, and calculators that should be able to show that this is worth the cost, but the company is very adamant that this is not possible. As long as people get away with continuing discards, this is difficult. "

Chile at the forefront

He says that hopes are mostly limited to electronic surveillance and cameras. A lot of work is put into developing this and the cost should not really be too much for anyone. Denmark has shown considerable ambition to be at the forefront when it comes to the development of electronic surveillance, but this development has probably come a long way in Chile.

"It simply came to our notice then. All vessels over 15 meters engaged in commercial fishing should be subject to camera surveillance.

They have this so that a private company takes over the supervision. They take samples where up to 10% of the recordings are viewed and the state pays the cost. If, on the other hand, there is something in the samples that needs to be examined more closely, then the companies will have to start paying. "

Jónas says that he sees nothing but that electronic surveillance will in the end be the only thing that will finally prevent discards within the European fleet, and this probably also applies in this country.

"There is so little coverage otherwise and the cost of other solutions is also far too high. The cameras also have a deterrent effect and the cost is not that high. ”As an example of the cost of setting up and operating a camera system, Denmark has calculated that the average investment cost of equipment is around EUR 8,000 (ISK 1.1 million) per vessel and that operating cost per year is about 4 thousand EUR (550 thousand ISK) based on looking at about 10% of all sources. For these calculations, the cost was analyzed for 396 vessels and the aforementioned amounts are averaged.

The data is missing

As far as the situation in this country is concerned, a lot of work has been put into fully utilizing the catch, which has yielded more value. The quota system and the possibility of transferring catch quotas have also created flexibility in fishing. Whether this has resulted in less discards, however, is not easy to confirm with statistical data.

"Most of us think that this is in a pretty good condition in this country compared to others, but we have nothing to back it up per se. As the National Audit Office's report shows, our supervision is not good enough. The only thing you can do is try to get a feel for it. "

For years, Jónas has talked to a number of people about discards, both in this country and elsewhere, and read most of what has been written about it in print. In an interview with Fiskifréttir in the autumn of 2017, he stated that fishermen were generally opposed to discards. That would actually be a long story short.

"After this interview appeared, I started getting quite a few phone calls as people were telling me a completely different story. They claimed that there was a significant amount of discarding going on, while the main drought that one hears in one still told one that discarding is not or at a minimum. "

Immediately afterwards, Kveikur came with his detailed discussion of discards, where an ugly picture was drawn.

"These pictures we saw in Kveik were absolutely horrible, and then you even hear stories that people are unloading the bag on deck, straight into the sea, if people do not describe the catch. Others, and in fact most, still claim with one person that the only discard is just some tits that do not take care of it. The only problem is that we need data. Then of course you can ask how much is a lot? "

The publication "From the mountain to quality food" was recently published on the treatment of slaughter lambs and lamb, compiled by Óli Þór Hilmarsson at Matís and Eyþór Einarsson at the Agricultural Advisory Center. Illustrations are by Sólveiga Eva Magnúsdóttir.

The publication summarizes useful guidelines for those involved in the process of making lamb quality food. The guidelines are based, among other things, on research and knowledge from Matís, the Agricultural University of Iceland, the Agricultural Advisory Center and their predecessors, which demonstrate the importance of proper handling of slaughter animals, from gathering mountains and until finished products arrive at meat tables in shops or restaurants. Conditions and treatment before and after slaughter affect the quality and characteristics of the meat.

The publication is available here.

The project DiscardLess formally ended recently with the final meeting of the project held in the premises DTU in Lyngby in Denmark. The project lasted for four years and a total of 31 companies and institutions from 12 countries took part in it.

The main goal DiscardLess was facilitating the implementation of a ban on discards that the European Union has been trying to impose for the last four years, with limited success. At the beginning of 2019, the discard ban was to be fully implemented in all sea areas covered by the European Union's Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), but it is clear that the ban can still be considered far-reaching. was aimed. Among the participants in the project were the companies Matís, SkipaSýn, Hampiðjan and Marel, and no country had as many representatives as Iceland in the project. The DiscardLess project focused, among other things, on countries that already have experience of dumping bans, with a view to trying to share their experiences, and it is clear that Iceland is being looked at in this regard.

The meeting covered the main phases of the project, obstacles and the next steps.

Here you can access the presentations and results that were presented at the final meeting. 

The North Atlantic Seafood Forum, held in Bergen, Norway, is one of the largest fisheries conferences in the world.

Attendees of the conference are influential people in the international fisheries sector as well as buyers, manufacturers, experts, etc. It can be estimated that the number of guests is around 900 people from 30 countries and approx. 300 companies. The conference will discuss issues that affect the interests of North Atlantic countries in particular. It covers, among other things, innovation, sustainability, supply and marketing; 16 seminars and 150 lectures.

Icelandic parties, companies in production, sales and services in the fisheries sector, parties in the industry's support environment are given the opportunity to participate, promote their products and services internationally, but Matís is one of the participants there.

Matís and the start-up company Codland have worked on projects where the goal is to utilize skin in valuable products.

Collagen is becoming increasingly popular as an active ingredient in various consumer products, but research indicates that there is a link between regular consumption of the substance and positive effects on the skin and joints. The world market for collagen-containing supplements is large and mainly made from pigs. Estimates assume increased demand for collagen peptides made from wild fish, so this is an ideal opportunity for Icelandic production.

The project Hydrolyzed collagen from the raw material of fish processing was recently funded by the Nordic Innovation Center and worked in collaboration with the Norwegian company Biomega, the Danish University of Technology (DTU) and Biosustain also in Denmark together with Matís and Codland. The aim of the project was, among other things, to develop new enzymes to process collagen from extra raw materials from white wild fish such as cod and fatty fish such as salmon.

Videos about the project can be found here.

For the next three years, Matis will be working with the University of Iceland and 13 other universities and institutions in Europe on the IValueFood project, which is intended to promote better health for consumers and support the food industry in Europe. 

This will be done by improving the knowledge and interest of future generations in food and food production. Recent methods, such as promotion through games, cooking interest groups, experiments with new cooking methods, twinning and "science meet food" will be used to increase the interest and knowledge of young consumers, from primary school to university, about food. Thus, the intention is to form a vanguard of young individuals who share values about food.

The project will involve various food companies and stakeholders, and the food industry will work with young consumers to define food values. Emphasis will be placed on areas within Europe where food interest and knowledge need to be increased in order to encourage future generations to make sensible and informed decisions in their food choices.

IValueFood is part of and funded by the large European Food Knowledge and Innovation Community, which aims to transform the environment of food production, processing and consumption by connecting consumers with companies, entrepreneurs, scientists and students across Europe. EIT Food supports new, sustainable and cost-effective solutions to improve consumer health and to ensure access to safe, high-quality food that has the least impact on the environment.