How do they make caviar?

Answer 1

Caviar is fish eggs, and they are processed in fisheries, many of which may be found in the nortwest United States and Alaska.

Salmon is brought to the fisheries, and preliminarily processed. This involves gutting and getting it down to the egg sack. Any routine worker - being paid near minimum wage - can do this.

That egg sack then goes to another section and under the watchful eye of the owners (the stuff is $50 an ounce and up) a another crew of near-minimum wage workers will remove the eggs from the fish by rubbing it on what looks like a screen. The screen mesh allows the eggs through, in to a bin below, and the remainder is tossed.

These workers are generally ones who have been there longer, or are believed to be more reliable. Caviar is treated like gold, as one palletful of containers of the product can be worth $50,000.

From that section, it is taken for cleaning. Then canning. All by near minimum wage workers, all watched very, very carefully. And yes, in spite of the watching, the workers will generally sample some. Don't ask me how I know this!

After the canning, it will be stacked on those pallets, ready to be shipped all over the world. The Japanese market for Alaska salmon caviar alone is enormous. So much so that the Japanese corporations own many of the fisheries there.

The reason why workers get near minimum wage is because of all the overtime they work. Fish processing is seasonal, and 16 to even 20 hour per day "shifts" is not uncommon for the few weeks to a month or so the worker is there.