Eastern mussels flex muscles at Grey Cup
Last Updated: Saturday, November 28, 2009 | 3:09 PM MT
CBC News
Mussels from Eastern Canada are being handed out during Grey Cup festivities in Calgary this weekend.
The giveaway is part of a new marketing campaign called Discover Mussels, said Linda Duncan, executive director of the Mussel Industry Council of North America.
About 1,100 kilograms of blue cultivated mussels were shipped west for the event, said Duncan, who is based in P.E.I.
'We feel it is time that mussels come out of their shell and become part of people's daily diet.'—Linda Duncan, Mussel Industry Council of North America
"When the Atlantic Schooners, an active group of football fans, asked if we could share this great food with all the die-hard CFLers, we couldn't resist," she said of the council, which is made up of mussel processors from Atlantic Canada and Quebec.
"Mussels, for too long, have been thought of as a specialty food," said Duncan. "We feel it is time that mussels come out of their shell and become part of people's daily diet."
So members of the Atlantic Schooners are serving up steamed mussels with melted butter to fans during the Grey Cup Olympic Plaza Family Fun Fest event, a weekend full of food and music.
Duncan hopes the event and campaign will encourage more people to eat mussels.
As it stands, recent consumer research suggests there's a lot of confusion about mussels.
"[Consumers] didn't know when they were fresh… Things that people in this part of the world take for granted, they didn't know.
"They didn't know how to cook them when they got them home. They didn't know what to do with them. They didn't know how to store them in their homes as well.
"So the campaign … will address all those kinds of things."
