Development of innovative value added meat based food products

Tony‘s Meats(Tony’s)成立于1963年，前身为安提戈尼什屠宰场有限公司(2015年更名为Tony‘s Meats Ltd)，现已成为新斯科舍省农村地区一家成功的肉类加工企业，为大型零售组织和出口市场提供高质量、高附加值的产品。该公司在一个35,000平方英尺的加工设施内运营，该设施经过联邦检查，拥有安全质量食品2级认证，以及清真和无麸质生产认证。从历史上看，Tony‘s Meats的食品研发在很大程度上是由消费者对本地产品与市场上现有产品相匹配的需求推动的。Tony‘s专注于服务当地客户，很少关注国内和国际市场。2011年，Tony‘s意识到业务已经停滞不前，如果没有新的、创新的产品，销售额将继续保持在这个平台期。从那时起，Tony‘s一直致力于建立创新的产品线，包括聘请产品研发经理和建造测试厨房进行研发活动。 加拿大最聪明的厨房(CSK)是一家食品研发中心，位于荷兰学院加拿大烹饪学院(CIC)内，是全国食品创新的领导者，也是NSERC的技术接入中心(TAC)。多学科团队将烹饪创造力、食品科学专业知识和市场洞察力结合在一起，帮助将尖端食品产品想法带入生活。Tony‘s Meats和CSK有着深厚的合作历史，可以追溯到几年前，包括几个导致这一倡议的产品开发项目。根据市场趋势和洞察力，Tony‘s已经确定了零售和餐饮服务的几个增长目标领域。CSK打算与Tony‘s及其研发团队密切合作，解决与开发新的创新产品相关的挑战，以满足市场需求。新产品和现有产品的保质期仍然是Tony‘s面临的一个重大挑战，以及与肉类产品相关的其他几个关键挑战。CSK的团队将努力克服这些挑战，并帮助开发一系列新的创新，为商业化做好准备。根据增长的目标领域，Tony‘s Meats确定了一些关键的新产品概念，这些概念将成为这一为期三年的合作伙伴关系头两年的主要重点。Tony‘s Meats和CSK将探索开发一种以肉类为基础的饼干、独特的以肉类为基础的浸渍、肉类零食包装、腌制的多尼尔产品、替代蛋白质，如蟋蟀、其他昆虫、菠萝蜜以及来自被屠宰动物的内脏、器官和内脏的生的和完全煮熟的宠物食品。Tony‘s Meats与CSK合作的长期目标是继续成为加工肉类产品的地区领先者，但认识到多元化进入其他独特类别的价值，以减少大宗商品牛肉和猪肉价格上涨的影响。 CSK和Tony‘s之间这样的行业和学术合作是独一无二的，CSK将为Tony’s的员工提供关于专利智能食品产品开发过程的培训和教育，同时也为加拿大烹饪学院的学生提供实践教育体验。有关SMART流程的培训对行业合作伙伴很有价值，因为它为他们提供了将这些流程整合到未来的内部产品开发试验中所需的工具，有助于降低风险并最大限度地缩短上市时间。加拿大烹饪学院的学生将与研发厨师并肩工作，为他们提供项目核心课程之外的增值体验。它还提供了行业互动，使他们能够建立毕业后可能会继续下去的关系，可能会导致就业。

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.