The routine isn't rehearsed, but after hundreds of appearances on the QVC shopping channel over the past decade, Ron and Margie Kauffman know what they'll say when it comes to the millions of Maryland-style crab cakes they sell under the brand Chesapeake Bay Gourmet.
There is plenty of talk about the large lumps of crabmeat, about the company's ties to Maryland and the Chesapeake. On QVC's Web site, the products are labeled "Made in USA."
What the carefully worded language omits is one critical fact. Little, if any, of the crabmeat used in the company's crab cakes is from the Chesapeake Bay or even the United States.
There is nothing dishonest about the labeling. The crab cakes - ranging from bite-sized hors d'oeuvres to dinner portions - are, in fact, assembled in a Baltimore County warehouse. But the bright white lumps of crabmeat that spill through each crab cake come mostly from Asia, with a little from Mexico and some "small percentage" from Maryland, though company founder Ron Kauffman Sr. won't say how much.
Kauffman's business, which has operated for more than 25 years, didn't always rely on foreign crabmeat. For years, the small company he and his wife ran with other relatives bought each pound of crabmeat from suppliers on Maryland's Eastern Shore.
That ensured that the company stayed small. Then, at almost the same time, QVC discovered the Kauffmans and the Kauffmans discovered Asia. There couldn't have been one relationship without the other.
Global forces that brought to the United States a cousin of the Maryland blue crab - caught in the waters off Southeast Asia - have allowed the Kauffmans to sell 8 million to 10 million crab cakes annually, about 5 million of them on QVC last year. In Maryland, just under 2.5 million pounds of local crabmeat were produced last year.
"It was very gut-wrenching that we even had to go away from Maryland meat," Ron Kauffman said. "We're very proud people that love selling Maryland-style crab cakes."
But, he added, "The customers are more concerned about the quality of the product than the origin of it."
Others in the industry have long struggled with the notion that the crabmeat they sell is not fresh domestic blue crab but something called blue swimming crab caught in Southeast Asia and pasteurized to make the long journey to American consumers.
