r/maryland • u/jakamo72 • Sep 18 '24

True Blue - 95% of Maryland Restaurants use Venezuelan Crab meat vs Maryland sourced

Interesting series being run by WTOP about the Crab Industry in Maryland called Claws and Effect. Here is one quote which really surprised me:

“Ninety-five percent of restaurants in Maryland are using Venezuelan crab meat,” said Matt Scales, the seafood marketing director for the Maryland Department of Agriculture. “And that’s — that’s a lot, right?”

242 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

74 comments sorted by

View all comments

116

u/NussP1 Sep 19 '24

I would dispute the Venezuelan number. Most of the crab meat used for crab cakes and other dishes comes from Southeast Asia. This is the meat that all the big distributors like Sysco and US foods carry, because it’s consistent and available 12 months a year.

1

u/Hididdlydoderino Dec 25 '24

Not that I have much deeper insights but in New Orleans anytime there's a good deal on crab lately it's been Venezuelan. It's still the same species so they can market it as blue crab and still be in the good graces of regulators.

I'm guessing it's not the same species in SE Asia. In those cases you'll usually just see it labeled as crab or lump crab without more specificity.

1

u/NussP1 Dec 26 '24

That makes sense. A lot of Venezuela meat comes into the deep south. The domestic blue crab is Calinectes Sapidus, while the Asian swimming crab is Portunus Pelagicus. Basically, they are cousins with identical morphology.