Establishment of seafood quality control standards in the Sultanate of Oman

Historically, the Sultanate of Oman has long been a seafaring nation. The famous Oman Arabian "dhows" have engaged in trade ranging from East Africa to the Far East for centuries. With respect to seafood, dried fish has long been a major trading commodity. But despite its long history of fishing and trading, Oman has not achieved an advanced level of product sales for its Fresh and frozen seafood. The reasons for this have included a lack of modem facilities (cold stores and ice), poorly applied handling and preservation techniques, and most importantly, no directed program of product improvement and quality control. Since the early 1970s, the bulk of Oman's GDP has been based on oil production. However, during that period, the Government of Oman recognized the need for economic diversification, particularly that associated with the utilization of renewable resources. Consequently, the Government constructed and then operated fishery complexes at many of the major fishing communities. These complexes typically included a marine workshop and a cold storage facility that also produced ice. The complexes were intended to improve the fishermen's understanding of preservation processes and access to them. The underlying concept was that higher quality fish command higher prices and return greater revenues than poor quality products. In the mid 1980s, these complexes and their operations were handed over to the private sector, with the expectation that a modem industry would develop more rapidly without government involvement. The ensuing development of modem cold storage facilities and ice plants, together with the establishment of export markets in the Gulf Cooperation countries, European Union, North American and Far East, confirmed the validity of this expectation.