Shrimp

Shrimp

Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...

 are marketed

Marketing

Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...

 and commercialised with several issues in mind. Most shrimp are sold frozen and marketed based on their categorisation of presentation, grading, colour, and uniformity.

Presentation

The main forms of presentation are head on shell on (HOSO), shell on (SO or "green headless shrimp"), peeled tail on (PTO), peeled undeveined (PUD), peeled and deveined

Deveining

Deveining is the removal of the gastrointestinal tract of a shrimp, a common part of preparing them for human consumption. The digestive tract is a dark band running from the head to the tail of the animal, where the spine would be if they were vertebrates. In females, the reproductive canal is...

 (P&D), and butterfly tail on (BTTY-TO). Sometimes a letter 'F' is placed in front of these abbreviation for the presentation in order to state that the shrimp comes from a farm (example: FSO – farmed, shell on). European and Asian markets prefer the HOSO presentation (which is a whole shrimp), while the American shrimp market prefers the remaining presentations.

Grading

Shrimp are graded according to their count per weight. HOSO shrimps are graded in units per kilogram

Kilogram

The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...

 (30/40, 40/50, 50/60, etc. pcs/kg). The standard pack is in a 2 kg box, 10 boxes into a master carton. The remaining presentations are graded in units per pound (U15, 16/20, 21/25, 26/30, 31/35, 36/40, 41/50, etc. pcs/lb

Pound (mass)

The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in the Imperial, United States customary and other systems of measurement...

). The standard pack is in a 5 lb box, 10 boxes into a master carton.

The numbers in the grading code indicate maximum and minimum quantity of pieces per unit weight, with U standing for "under".

Colour

HOSO shrimp are also graded according to their colour, with A1 being the lightest colour and A5 the darkest colour. Shrimp tend to take on the colour of their habitat

Habitat (ecology)

A habitat is an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism...

, so sandy ponds tend to yield an A1 colour shrimp, and shrimp ponds with plastic black liners tend to yield A5 colour shrimp. A2–A3 colour shrimp are preferred for fresh commercialisation, and A4–A5 colour shrimp are preferred for cooked commercialisation. The other presentations are not usually graded by colour.

Uniformity

Another concept to grade is the uniformity. This is measured by visually selecting the ten largest and the ten smallest pieces from 1 kg of product. The two groups are then weighed separately and the weight of the large pieces group is divided by the weight of the small pieces group. The result is the uniformity factor. Normally the maximum accepted value for the uniformity factor is 1.5.