A young Japanese entrepreneur has come up with a way of processing unpopular, often unpalatable shark meat for the Japanese market by turning it into shark jerky.


“If you didn’t know it was shark you would swear it was beef jerky,” the 28-year-old Suisan Kikukawa told his local Nishi-Nippon newspaper.


Living near the bay of Nagasaki, Kikukawa knew that shark meat was plentiful but had no market in Japan owing to its unpleasant, ammonia-like odor. He experimented with over a hundred different methods over a six-month period before he settled on one method that gives shark flesh a pleasant, beefy taste.


He now plans to build a small factory and offer 20-gram bags of shark jerky for around JPY250 (GBP 1.25).

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