Picking 



Mew Ways 

 to Process 

 Crabs 



Four women pick the white lump 

 meat from a mountain of freshly 

 cooked blue crabs. 



By Kathy Hart 



After years of stagnation, the 

 North Carolina blue crab processing 

 industry is changing. 



Used to be, it was almost a 

 misnomer to call what happened in the 

 crab houses along the Tar Heel coast 

 "processing." 



Large carts of hard blue crabs were 

 cooked to a bright red, cooled and 

 dumped onto long stainless steel 

 tables. In the surrounding chairs sat 

 women, black and white, usually 

 older, with hair nets hugging their 



gray and white locks to their heads. 



With their eyes trained on their 

 fingers and a short knife in one hand, 

 these women nimbly plucked snow- 

 white meat from blue crabs that had 

 more compartments than a lady's 

 handbag. With their fingers ablur and 

 bits of crab meat flying, these pickers 

 could easily fill more than three 1- 

 pound plastic cups with succulent 

 meat each hour. 



Once the meat weighed in at its 

 anointed 1 -pound weight, a top would 

 be slapped on the container, and the 



12 MAY/JUNE 1992 



