Page 31 - Spring2009

oil are extracted from the hepatic tissues, which was built to store potatoes, but was gutted by fire
float about in the oil like hard resinous masses. . soon after completion. It had been sitting empty
. . In order to fully carry out the extraction, it is all these years and came on the market at just the
necessary to raise the temperature considerably time we were looking for a facility, and became
above the boiling point of water. . . . The oil pre- available to us at virtually no cost. We cleaned it
pared in this way is very dark, almost black, and out, washed and painted the walls, painted it and
with a greenish fluorescence in reflected light. installed a new steel roof. The building currently
In thin layers and by transmitted light it shows holds six fermenting vats of just under 10,000
a brown colour, and it is therefore termed brown gallons each.
oil. . .” The roof is a solar roof and we use natural
The writer then describes processing sunlight for heat and light—we have lots of sun-
methods introduced to Norway in the 1850s by light in Nebraska. Our next project is to start sun
Peter Möller, which resulted in a much purer, drying fish eggs in a part of the building.
consistently light-colored oil made from fresh, My other task was to find the livers. The
not putrefied livers, considerably more palatable search began several years ago—I picked up the
in terms of taste and smell. He notes, however, phone and made many cold calls, most of which
that the “brown oils are actually used to a cer- got me nowhere. People said I was crazy to want
tain extent for medicinal purposes at the present to purchase thousands of pounds of cod livers.
day.” Finally I met a Russian who took an interest in
After reading this passage, and foreseeing the project and found the livers for me—in Rus-
the demise of the last natural cod liver oil from sia, they know about cod livers.
Europe, I was determined to produce a light The first load of 10,000 pounds, which we
brown fermented cod liver oil according to the used for experimental purposes, arrived two
old methods. years ago. The first load for commercial produc-
tion—40,000 pounds of frozen cod livers—ar-
PRODUCTION OF FERMENTED rived in a tractor trailer—packed into pallets.
COD LIVER OIL Future deliveries will come by railroad!
But how to do this on a large scale? That
was the challenge I was facing. It has taken six TESTING COD LIVER OIL
dedicated years of work to get to the point of Our next challenge was to test the oils for
offering the fermented cod liver oil to the com- nutrient content. Of course, we do the standard
munity. The first challenge was to figure out a tests for pathogens, PCBs and heavy metals. We
way to ferment the livers in large vats; and the do this to every batch, and our batches are small,
second was to find the livers. so the number of tests per gallon of product is
The method we have developed processes substantially greater than typically carried out
the cod liver oil through a proprietary non-heat- in the industry. The heavy metal levels are “not
ing natural lacto-fermentation. The process can detectable” and the PCBs meet WHO .090 ppm
take up to six months and is carefully handled standards, the limit to which these compounds
throughout the process to ensure the oil is clean can be measured. We have
and natural. Industrialized fish oils, including Measuring nutrient levels turned out to be never found
cod liver oil, are heavily carbon filtered and complicated. When you test industrial cod liver
heated after rendering or extracting. We have de- oils to which have been added synthetic vitamins any
veloped a unique cleaning process that does not A and D, you get graphs with well defined peaks, contaminants
use carbon filters or heat. Both heat and carbon indicating the presence of vitamin A or D. But the in our
filters remove flavors, odors, colors and nutrients, tests for our fermented cod liver oil came back
and also denature the fragile unsaturated fatty showing a jagged line, with numerous peaks, no naturally
acids such as DHA and EPA. matter which method we used, and these peaks produced
Our cod liver oil “factory” is a large build- did not always match up with synthetic control fermented
ing in north central Nebraska. We prefer to call peaks. The lab technicians were as surprised as
it our cod liver oil green house. The building we were. Their explanation was that this natural cod liver oil.

SPRING 2009 Wise Traditions 29