Gigas oyster or Pacific oyster

We buy our oysters from France when they are seed and very small, (about half the size of your little finger nail) usually in the spring and they are put straight down to our oyster beds, just infront of the work premises.

It takes about 3 years for the oysters to grow to sale size. Throughout these 3 years we bring the oysters up from their sea beds, grade them and re-bag them a few times ~ basically keep an eye on them so that they will grow to be a perfectly beautiful oyster.

Grading oysters ~ We have recently purchased a top of the range grader machine and oysters are graded (according to size and quality) into their different sizes (3 grades), until eventually after 3 years and hopefully for the last time they are washed and put along the conveyor-belt to be checked again and placed into our tanks for purification.

However even after 3 years there will be a few to put back down for extra growth.

The rest are now ready for sale!

Once all the grading is done and the oysters are ready for sale we purify them (now we don’t have to do this because our waters here are grade ‘A’ , this means that the oysters are fit for human consumption straight out of the water). Purification takes 42 hours and is done by the water in the tanks being pumped continuously round through a U.V. system.

We have a HACCP system in place, this is where everything is recorded about each batch of oysters that are purified for sale.

Each batch is given a ‘batch code’ so that we are able to trace exactly when and where the oysters have been.

We also do quite a lot of sampling~

We have our oysters and seawater tested by 3 different laboratories throughout Ireland ~ one in Dublin, in Mayo and in Dundalk.

Sampling is carried out each week.