Nagasaki entrepreneur develops shark jerky

WHEN LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMON, they say, make lemonade. Well, what do you do when life hands you have a surplus of sharks?

If you’re Kikukawa Suisan, a company in Isahaya, Nagasaki Prefecture, you make shark meat jerky. The company is a microenterprise whose primary business is processing mackerel. But Kikukawa Ryuta wanted to find a way to use shark meat to create a niche in the market. The maritime predator is plentiful in the waters off Nagasaki, but its meat is seldom used for food because of its unpleasant, ammonia-like odor.

That drawback has its benefits, however—shark meat is dirt cheap. So Kikukawa went to work three or four days a week on his own time to come up with a way to neutralize the smell.

As the Nishinippon Shimbun reports (article not online), he tried nearly 100 different methods for six months before he finally succeeded. His task was complicated by other problems. Drying the meat for too long makes it brittle and crumbly like a cracker. In contrast, insufficient drying leaves too much moisture, which will stew the meat when it’s heated for sterilization.

Kikukawa boasts that competitors won’t have an easy time of it if they want to copy his product. The youthful entrepreneur claims you’d think it was beef jerky if you didn’t know what you were eating. He plans to build a small factory and offer 20-gram bags of shark jerky for a suggested retail price of 250 yen (about $US 2.15). He’ll pitch the product to liquor stores and other commercial establishments, and promote it by touting it as the perfect snack to have with a beer.

Heck, I’d try it once. Wouldn’t you?