Frozen Foods and Clarence Birdseye
Labrador Fishing and Preservation Inspired Food Industry Development
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1886, Birdseye was one of eight children. As a child, he preferred spending his time at the seashore or in the fields. Keenly interested in the natural world, he studied biology at Massachusetts’ Amherst College. He left school after two years in 1910 to find work.
His interest in nature and the environment enabled him to obtain his first job. He was employed as a field naturalist for the Biological Survey of the United States Department of Agriculture during the summers. He held a variety of jobs during the winters, including with an insurance company in New York
Labrador Frozen Foods and Clarence Birdseye
Birdseye left his government job in 1912 so that he could travel to Labrador on a six-week cruise with medical missionary Sir William Grenfell. He left the expedition when he learned of great profits made by fox trapping and breeding in Labrador. For five years he collected furs to sell and travelled great distances by dog sled. In 1916 his wife, the former Eleanor Gannett, and their five-week-old son moved to Labrador with him.
Birdseye observed that fish caught by the Innu people of Labrador froze very quickly after being pulled from the water. The fish retained their flavour and texture when cooked later. He began his experiments in food preservation with fish as well as duck, caribou, and cabbage. His theory was that the quick-freeze method was essential in order to retain the foods’ qualities.
Food Industry Development
Birdseye and his family returned to the United States in 1917 when that country entered World War I. He held several positions in Washington, D.C. From 1920 to 1922 he served as an assistant to the president of the United States Fisheries Association. During that period, Birdseye returned to his experiments with the quick-freeze methods he learned in Labrador.
In 1923 he invented and later perfected a system of packaging and flash-freezing fresh food. As quoted on the Birdseye official website, he said that the “production of perishable foods, dressed at the point of production and quick-frozen in consumer packages, was initiated,…in the kitchen of my own home late in 1923 when I experimentally packaged rabbit meat and fish fillets in candy boxes and froze the packages with dry ice.”
Up to that time, foods were frozen at a slow rate. Large ice crystals formed and damaged the cell membranes of the food. When it defrosted, the food’s flavour and texture were lost in the water that drained off.
General Seafoods Company to General Foods Corporation
In 1924 Birdseye established the General Seafoods Company in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Financial backers supported his experimental work that resulted in development of the first commercially practical freezer. Over time, he developed a system that packed fresh foods into waxed-cardboard cartons and flash-froze them under high pressure. Large capital investment was necessary to promote and advance the new frozen foods industry.
In 1929 the company was sold for $22 million to a company that eventually became the General Foods Corporation. Clarence Birdseye received slightly less that $1 million from the purchase. He remained with the corporation as head of its research and development section. He entered a joint venture to manufacture refrigerated grocery display cases in 1934 that were leased to grocers who could not afford to purchase them.
Clarence Birdseye the Father of Frozen Foods
Over his lifetime, Birdseye was granted 300 foreign and U. S. patents. He is described on the official Birdseye website as a “man of extraordinary vision, insatiable curiosity, and enormous persistence.” When asked about his accomplishments, he said that he had applied the knowledge of the Innu people of Labrador, combined it with scientists’ theories, and adapted it to quantity production.
Clarence Frank Birdseye II, known as the “Father of Frozen Food”, died in 1956, survived by his wife Eleanor and their four children.
Clarence Birdseye: Father of Frozen Food at the Birdseye Foods Website
Innu People of Labrador
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Frozen Food Section in Store
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