Every year the subject of innovative products crops up and I always remember the name Birdseye. Pupils do not believe that Clarence Birdseye was a real man! They invariably think it is a joke name in the realms of Ronald MacDonald!
Mr Birdseye
Well, I can assure you Clarence Francis Birdseye II was born in New York in 1886. He got a job working for the US State Agriculture Department and he was posted to Labrador. There he saw the local Inuit people would catch fish and then make it keep for much longer than normal by freezing it in thick ice. He was taught this trick by the Inuits and to his surprise he also found that when the fish was thawed it still tasted fresh! The trick was that the ice was freezing the fish at 40°C, whereas the contemporary methods of freezing food at that time circa 1915 was at higher temperatures and this meant the food froze slower and when thawed they did not taste as fresh.
Inuit Children in freezing temperatures
Birdseye spotted an opportunity and started his own company called Birdseye Seafoods Inc. To his surprise his company went bust in 1924! No-one seemed to want his frozen food. However, he had had an another idea. He would store his fish in cartons which he patented the process. His new company was called General Seafood Corporation, and this new idea took off. In 1929 Birdseye sold his firm to Goldman Sachs for $22 million. This company eventually became General Foods and the people behind what we now know as the Birds Eye Frozen Food company.
The legendary Fish Fingers
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