Man has learned much about crabs since their first meeting-from how not to hold a live and unhappy crab to how to enjoy crabmeat in many ways.

Crabmeat is a delectable food, the subject of much praise both historical and promotional. For example, according to "Ye Maryland Chronicle," a featured column in the Baltimore Sun in 1933, a yearning for the bountiful Maryland crab was the main reason for Captain John Smith's visit to the Chesapeake Bay in 1607, and Lord Baltimore first smacked his lips over Maryland crabcakes in 1634.

It is true that crabs were so abundant and easily caught in the early days that the only market for so common a product was in the big cities. Prior to 1878 all crabs were sold alive and for about 10 cents a dozen. As early as 1855

there was an important soft crab fishery in New Jersey. The first outof-state shipment of Chesapeake Bay soft crabs left Crisfield, Maryland, for Philadelphia by train in 1873. In 1878 canning experiments were begun and a year later a crab cannery opened at Oxford, Maryland, employing 170 men and processing 12 to 15 thousand crabs a day. The pickers were paid 2 to 3 cents a pound. Fresh-cooked crabmeat in iced, unsealed cans was not made available until 1883.

The business has grown. Landings in 1900 were estimated at less than 10 million pounds. In 1968 blue crab landings-live weighttotaled 115,797,000 pounds, compared to 82,038,000 pounds for king crab and 49,970,000 pounds for Dungeness crab landings. The value of blue crab landings that same year was $12,157,000.

and many are located in rural areas. Crabs are received at a dock or a loading platform almost universally by boat, although some arrive by truck. Due to the nature of the industry the methods of catching crabs and processing crabmeat are much the same as they have been for nearly a hundred years. Some progress is being made in developing "picking" machinery with various water pressure, vacuum, shaking, and centrifuging techniques.

All crabs are cooked and then cooled before being picked. This means that every plant must have some system for cooling, and cooling practices vary widely, from large holding rooms using commercial refrigeration units to concrete platforms on which the hot, cooked crabs are dumped and hosed down with cool water.

Hand picking requires many workers and the largest room in the plant. Crab pickers most commonly pick the meat directly into 12-ounce or one-pound cans and take the filled cans to the adjacent weighing and packing room when five pounds are picked. Almost all crabmeat today is packed in cans in crushed ice, placed in barrels or boxes, and shipped quickly. Ten days is considered a normally safe span between picking and consumption of fresh crabmeat.

The Food and Drug Administration has learned much about crabs and crabmeat since 1922-the year the Agency began inspecting crab plants. Out of eight Notices of Judgment in the records for that year, two involved decomposition and six short weight. The economy of the times was reflected in the short-weight fines of $10 to $100, although the offenses would be considered quite gross by today's standards-five pounds claimed for crabmeat weighing as little as 44 pounds!

FDA inspection of blue crab

plants involves four Districts: Baltimore and Atlanta, which share slightly more than 90 percent of the inspectional load; New Orleans; and Dallas. The sanitation problems encountered reflect not only the peculiarities of a given industry but the general problems resulting from human behavior en masse as it affects food production. For example:

1. The crabs themselves arrive at the plant live, and with many, varied bacteria. Some with a potential for causing diseases are Clostridium botulinum, type E; Staphylococcus; Salmonella; Vibrio parahaemolyticus; and Shigella. Proper cooking kills these pathogens.

2. Sanitation is less than ideal in some plants. For example, 1970 FDA inspection reports include the following observations:

• Wood baskets used to store crabs and claws

• Claws stored up to two days before picking

Flies in the picking room

• Damaged screens and doors, admitting insects and other pests

3. Employee work habits often indicate the need for education and enforcement of food sanitation requirements. Some offenses observed:

Failing to sanitize hands after using toilet

Picking up crab claw from floor and returning to picking table

• Using knives with tape-wrapped or wooden handles which cannot be sanitized

Allowing excessive crab waste to accumulate on picking tables Failing to sanitize can lids Wrapping tape on fingers Failing to wear hairnets

• Placing pocketbooks and personal

tion problems do exist, the reasons are usually apparent to trained inspection teams. Many of the problems in both sanitation and production are intertwined with the economics of the crabmeat industry: • Most crabmeat production is seasonal. Although a few fish for crabs the year around, most plants either close part of the year or change to oyster shucking, shrimp processing, or handling fish products.

The labor supply is dwindling; crab picking, with its relatively low wages, fails to attract young people. Machine picking is still in the experimental and developmental stages and costs are high.

The supply of crabs is dwindling