Book excerpt: While there are many quality assurance books on the market, very few address the application of the concept to the seafood industry. In addition, many of the books that are available take a theoretical approach and there fore do not provide actual examples of the "fins and bones" of quality programs. The author, in teaching quality assurance over nine years, has not been able to find a textbook that is suitable as a reference text in quality assurance courses for the seafood industry. It is this situation that has prompted the preparation of this book, which takes a practical approach to the subject of quality assurance in seafood processing operations. This book can serve as either a textbook or as a reference text. As a textbook it is written for students of quality assurance at the technician, technologist, and university levels. In this role it is intended that the student will start at the beginning of the book and proceed through in sequence, so as to gain a complete understanding of the design, implementation, and operation of a quality program in seafood processing operations. It is the hope of the author that the book also functions quite well as a desk reference for the managers of seafood processing operations who need to refer occa sionally to particular items or chapters. In this sense, each chapter is designed to stand alone as a discussion of a particular concept within the quality assurance discipline.