US Patent Issued to The United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture, POP OATS on Dec. 30 for "Crisp and hard whole oat kernel snack" (California Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Dec. 31 -- United States Patent no. 12,507,718, issued on Dec. 30, was assigned to The United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Agriculture (Washington) and POP OATS LLC (Albany, Canada).

"Crisp and hard whole oat kernel snack" was invented by Tara H. Mchugh (Albany, Calif.), Zhongli Pan (El Macero, Calif.), Donald A. Olson (Isleton, Calif.), Marc Pfeiffer (Los Angeles) and Rodger Morris (Oakland, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A crisp and hard whole kernel oat snack product made by fully hydrating whole oat kernels (i.e. oat groats), and then gelatinizing the starch in the whole oat kernels using an infrared process. The gelatinized oats are then r...