Mass., in 1932 and was carried out by
Harrison and Anderson who conlprised
the agency's authorities on fish oils.
When they were transferred to Seattle
in 1933, this work was continued. Eventually
a fairly extensive series of research
studies were carried out by Sanford
(1945); Sanford et al. (1946); Sanford
and Bonham (1947); and McKee et al.
(1944). This vitamin A in fish oil work
ceased in 1950 when synthetic vitamin
A became available. At least in the
United States, it was so much less expensive
to use the synthetic vitamin A
than to process fish livers that that industry
was no long feasible.
In 1937, a research project was started
by Harrison to develop an improved
method for extracting fish oil from fish
meal. Initially, the oil content may run,
for example 10 percent, but owing to the
oil somehow complexing with the protein,
conventional ethyl ether extraction
methods used for fish meal stored for
some time may give as little as 1 percent
oil. Many methods were tried by
Harrison from 1937 to 1942. When he
was transferred to Washington, D.C., the
work was continued by Stansby up to
1953, and a modified acid hydrolysis
ether extraction method was developed
(Stansby, 1948) which was adopted by
the Association of Official Agriculture
Chemists for inclusion as an official
procedure in their book of methods. The
work as described above covers all the
work carried out by the Seattle NMFS
Laboratory on fish oils up to 1953.