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.

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“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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