Development of innovative value added meat based food products

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Tony's Meats (Tony's) was established in 1963, originally as Antigonish Abattoir Ltd, (rebranded to become Tony's Meats Ltd in 2015) and has become a successful meat processing business in rural Nova Scotia, delivering high quality, value added products to large retail organizations and export markets. The company operates within a 35,000 square foot processing facility that is federally inspected and has Safe Quality Food Level 2 certification, along with certification in Halal and Gluten-free production. Historically, food product R&D at Tony's Meats was largely driven by consumer requests for local products matching existing products in the market. Tony's focused on serving the local clientele with little focus on national and international markets. In 2011, Tony's recognized that business had become stagnant and without new, innovative products, sales would continue to remain on this plateau. Since then, Tony's has dedicated efforts towards establishing an innovative product pipeline including hiring a product R&D manager and constructing a test kitchen to conduct R&D activities. Canada's Smartest Kitchen (CSK), the food product research and development center, co-located within Holland College's Culinary Institute of Canada (CIC) is a national leader in food innovation and is an NSERC Technology Access Center (TAC). The multidisciplinary team combines culinary creativity, food science expertise and market insight to help bring leading-edge food product ideas to life. Tony's Meats and CSK have a strong history of collaboration, dating back several years, including several product development projects, that have led to this initiative. Tony's has identified several target areas for growth in both retail and food service, based on market trends and insight. CSK intends to work closely with Tony's and their R&D team to solve challenges associated with the development of new innovative products that will satisfy that market demand. Shelf life of new and existing products continue to be a significant challenge for Tony's as well as several other key challenges associated with meat-based products. The team at CSK will work to overcome these challenges and to also help develop a pipeline of new innovations that will be ready for commercialization. Based on the target areas for growth, Tony's Meats has identified some key new product concepts that will be the primary focus of the first two years of this three-year partnership. Tony's Meats and CSK will explore development of a meat-based cracker, unique meat-based dips, meat snack packs, cured donair products, alternative proteins such as crickets, other insects, and Jackfruit and raw and fully cooked pet treats from offal, the organs and entrails from butchered animals. Tony's Meats long term goal in partnering with CSK is to continue to be a regional leader in processed meat products but recognizes the value in diversifying into other unique categories to reduce the impacts of upswings in the commodity beef and pork pricing. Industry-academic collaborations such as this between CSK and Tony's are unique in that CSK will provide training and education on the proprietary SMART food product development process to employees of Tony's while also providing hands-on educational experiences to students of The Culinary Institute of Canada. Training on the SMART process is valuable to the industry partner as it gives them the tools needed to incorporate these processes into future internal product development experimentation, helping to reduce risk and minimize time to market. Students of The Culinary Institute of Canada will work shoulder to shoulder with R&D chefs, giving them a value-added experience outside of the core curriculum of their program. It also provides industry interaction, allowing them to create relationships that may continue after graduation, potentially leading to employment.