SHURE FOODS, INC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.5

Description

The blue crab industry in the U.S. struggles to compete with cheap, imported crabmeat due to low offshore labor costs. Furthermore, a primary challenge for the industry is to maintain the flavor of picked crabmeat, since a substantial amount of crab flavor is lost as the liquid is cooked out during the traditional precooking of crab prior to hand picking. The mechanical deshelling method used to produce raw crabmeat allows crab to be processed 20 times faster, at a greatly reduced cost, than by conventional methods for blue crabs (e.g., manual handpicking). This allows 300% more meat to be recovered in the case of blue crab. Using the Shure Foods patented method, all moisture in the crabmeat is subsequently locked within the gel of a restructured product, such that better flavor and yield are delivered to the consumer. This project will develop the needed technology to assure that consistent, acceptable gelation is achieved for raw blue and snow crabmeat. The benefit will be a revived blue crab industry and better utilization of snow crab in the United States, with greater value and diversity of crab products for the US consumer.