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US companies file class-action suit alleging price-fixing by Norwegian farmed salmon firms

April 25, 2019 — A class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of U.S. direct purchasers of Norwegian farmed salmon is accusing multiple Norwegian firms including Mowi, Grieg Seafood, Lerøy Seafood, and SalMar of conspiring to fix the prices of farmed salmon.

The lawsuit, filed on Tuesday, 23 April, alleges the major players in Norway’s farmed salmon industry exchanged competitively sensitive information among themselves, with the aim of artificially controlling the price of farm-raised salmon bought by U.S. seafood buyers, a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The lawsuit is largely based on an ongoing investigation by the European Commission into “suspected anti-competitive practices” in the farmed Atlantic salmon sector in Europe, first made public in February 2019. The investigation included raids by E.C. officials of the Scottish and Dutch corporate offices of several seafood companies based in Norway, including Mowi, Grieg Seafood, Lerøy Seafood, and SalMar.

A letter sent by the E.C. to one of the companies, obtained by SeafoodSource, revealed the E.C. approved a decision on 6 February, 2019, to investigate information received “from different actors operating at different levels in the salmon market” alleging that some Norwegian producers “participate or have participated in anti-competitive agreements and/or concerted practices related to different ways of price coordination in order to sustain and possibly increase prices of farmed Norwegian Atlantic salmon.”

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Florida (Miami Division) on behalf of Mentor, Ohio-based Euclid Fish Company, according to Arthur Bailey of Hausfeld LLP, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys. Numerous other similar suits have and will continue to be filed containing similar allegations, including by Schneider’s Seafood & Meats of Cheektowaga, New York, and by Euro USA Inc. of Cleveland, Ohio, Bailey told SeafoodSource. Within the next month, the cases will be combined into one larger class-action suit including all direct purchasers of Norwegian farmed salmon, Bailey said. The case will be heard by James Lawrence King.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Feds seek to get S.C. claims tossed in seismic testing suit

April 25, 2019 — As cross-arguments continue between the many parties in a federal lawsuit seeking to block seismic testing off coastal waters of East Coast states, three more municipalities in the Carolinas will get their voices heard, while the federal government tries to get some of South Carolina’s specific claims tossed.

Conservation groups, including Georgia’s One Hundred Miles, filed the suit in December in order to stop the seismic testing that is the precursor to offshore oil and gas drilling. The federal government already awarded five companies permits for incidental harassment of marine mammals that would occur during seismic testing.

The federal defendants — the National Marine Fisheries Services, NMFS Assistant Administrator Chris Oliver and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross — argue in a Monday filing that South Carolina “states four novel and legally baseless theories raised by no other party in this suit.”

Those claims, according to the federal attorneys, are that 2017 orders by the president and the Commerce secretary were invalid because “they retract putative policies” from the Obama administration, that they seismic testing is a public nuisance, that any survey activities would constitute trespassing and that the survey activities violate admiralty law.

Read the full story at The Brunswick News

Trump administration opts not to pursue appeal of driftnet ruling

April 23, 2019 — The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has decided against appealing a federal judge’s ruling that NOAA Fisheries illegally withdrew a proposal that would have placed hard caps on the bycatch of protected species caught in California’s swordfish drift gillnet fishery.

On Monday, 15 April, when its brief was due to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the administration instead filed a notice to dismiss its appeal voluntarily. As a result, NOAA Fisheries will begin talks with the Pacific Fishery Management Council to determine the limits that should be placed on such species as humpback whales, loggerhead turtles, and leatherback turtles.

The PFMC initially worked with key stakeholders to establish caps on nine species, and NOAA Fisheries published the draft review for implementation in October 2016. However, eight months later, after Trump was elected president, the agency reversed its course.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

StarKist Fined by EPA For Failing to Comply With 2018 Settlement

April 19, 2019 — StarKist will have to pay $84,500 in penalties for violating the terms of a 2018 settlement, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The 2018 settlement was related to deficiencies in environmental compliance at StarKist’s tuna processing facility in American Samoa. StarKist initially paid a $6.5 million penalty to resolve the violations of federal environmental laws. The company had also agreed to make upgrades to reduce water pollution and the risk of releases of hazardous substances, in addition to providing American Samoa with $88,000 in emergency equipment for responding to chemical releases.

The EPA reports that StarKist violated the terms of the settlement on “multiple occasions” when they made unauthorized discharges from the facility to Pago Pago Harbor. A reported 80,000 gallons of wastewater was dumped into the inner harbor in one incident. The company also “violated the consent decree terms on 27 days when wastewater was routed around one of the required treatment measures to bypass a step in the wastewater treatment process.”

“EPA will continue to work closely with StarKist to ensure the needed safety and pollution control upgrades are realized, per our agreement,” said EPA Pacific Southwest Regional Administrator Mike Stoker. “With our American Samoa EPA partners, we will protect Pago Pago Harbor and the marine environment of American Samoa.”

This story was republished with permission from SeafoodNews.com

Federal appellate court upholds NOAA Fisheries’ definition of bycatch

April 18, 2019 — A panel of federal appellate judges has upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled on NOAA Fisheries’ method for assessing bycatch in New England fisheries.

The ruling, which was announced on Friday, 12 April, in the District of Columbia chambers of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, allows NOAA Fisheries to use statistical sampling to determine the amount of bycatch. It stems from a 2011 court case where judges ruled the agency did not establish methodology standards to assess the number of other species caught and discarded when harvesting selected fish.

In both instances, environmental group Oceana pursued the lawsuit.

After that decision, NOAA Fisheries decided to utilize human observers on vessels. In most cases, the observers were trained biologists who reported on a vessel’s harvest. However, since it was too expensive to place an observer on every vessel, the agency created a statistical formula that allocated the observers in a fashion that reduced bias. This enabled NOAA Fisheries officials to build fishery-wide assessments based the observers’ findings.

Oceana filed the subsequent suit in July 2015 and argued that the sampling method implemented violated the Magnuson-Stevens Act. In addition, it claimed that observers were only counting the bycatch of species under management plans within the agency.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

New Fishing Rights in Gulf of Maine Upheld by Judge

April 17, 2019 — A federal judge upheld a rule Monday that opens up a portion of the western Gulf of Maine to commercial and recreational fishing for the first time.

The Conservation Law Foundation had challenged the rule last year, claiming the National Marine Fisheries Service wrongly prioritized economic considerations over its conservation duty when it reduced the protected area in that portion of the Gulf by about 25%.

While the rule offered habitat protection in the eastern Gulf of Maine for the first time, the conservation group said the agency and the New England Regional Council should have closed more of the Gulf to fishing.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg found Monday, however, that the rule passes muster.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service 

DC Circuit Sinks Challenge to Fishing Bycatch Rule

April 15, 2019 — The D.C. Circuit on Friday upheld the government’s method of counting fish and other sea life that are unintentionally swept up in commercial fishing nets.

Fishing boats often throw back this unwanted haul, known as bycatch, but the creatures often do not survive the ordeal. Concerned about the impact to the undersea habitat, Congress has required the National Marine Fisheries Service to develop a way of counting bycatch.

The NMFS changed its method for counting bycatch in 2015, after a court struck down an earlier change because it included a provision that allowed the government to go around the normal method if it had a budget shortfall. Because the agency controlled the amount of money that went towards counting bycatch, the D.C. Circuit held the policy was not the standardized method Congress had called for.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service

StarKist facing “life or death” hearing in price-fixing case

April 12, 2019 — A U.S. judge holds the fate of canned tuna company StarKist in his hands, according to a company representative speaking in federal court.

Niall Lynch, an attorney representing StarKist in a hearing with U.S. District Court Judge Edward M. Chen, called the decision in the upcoming sentencing of the company following its guilty plea “unprecedented.”

“This is a USD 50 million [EUR 44.3 million] hearing. The low end [of the fine] is USD 50 million, the high is USD 100 million [EUR 88.5 million],” he said. “This is really about the life or death of our company, and its ability to continue as an ongoing concern.”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based StarKist announced it would plead guilty on Thursday, 18 October, 2018, to fixing the prices of the canned tuna it sold in the United States between 2011 and 2013. In that time, StarKist acknowledges selling around USD 600 million (EUR 531 million) worth of canned tuna, setting its minimum criminal fine at USD 50 million and the ceiling on the fine at USD 100 million.

Attorneys representing the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice have argued the company can afford to pay the maximum fine, but at the 14 November, 2018, hearing in which StarKist entered its guilty plea, Lynch said that amount, combined with the restitution it is paying to retailers and foodservice companies as a result of lawsuits connected to the price-fixing, will put the company’s future in jeopardy.

Read the full story at the Seafood Source

Tuna Fishermen Say Agencies Rejected Input on New Rules

April 12, 2019 — Representing large net-fishing vessels in the Pacific Ocean, the American Tunaboat Association filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming government fishery regulators left industry experts in the dark about a forthcoming biological opinion that could limit commercial tuna operations.

The complaint, filed by Baker Botts attorney Megan Berge in Washington, D.C., federal court, names as defendants Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association and the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS.

According to the lawsuit, NMFS is preparing a biological opinion that could impose new permit requirements and limits on tuna fishery operations in the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the American Tunaboat Association says it was denied the ability to provide input during an informal phase of the assessment process.

The fishing advocacy group claims the NMFS violated the Administrative Procedure Act by not allowing it to review any drafts or provide first-hand, expert recommendations for the developing opinion that could directly impact its members.

Read the full story at the Courthouse News Service

Groups Lobby Judge for Immediate Fixes to Salmon-Killing Dams

April 5, 2019 — Environmental groups urged a judge to order immediate changes to the government’s operation of a series of dams in the upper Willamette River basin, saying steelhead and Chinook salmon are too imperiled to risk waiting for litigation over dam operations to play out.

The Army Corps of Engineers operates a series of 13 dams in the upper Willamette River and its tributaries. The dams provide flood control, produce electricity and store water for irrigation and for the city of Salem, Oregon. The dams are also the main cause of the precipitous decline of upper Willamette steelhead and Chinook salmon.

But the government hasn’t acted to protect fish, environmental groups say.

In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued a biological opinion finding that the dams were decimating the protected fish by killing the majority of young salmon and steelhead as they make their way past the dams toward the ocean. The dams also torpedo water quality by raising water temperature to deadly levels and force young fish to cross reservoirs filled with predators and parasites.

In its biological opinion, National Marine Fisheries Service said the Corps could continue to operate the dams while reducing impacts to fish if it immediately implemented a slew of measures to improve fish passage and water quality.

But the Corps didn’t do that, and fish populations continued to decline.

Read the full story at Courthouse News Service