SEAFOOD.COM NEWS — April 9, 2014 — Zhangzidao Fishery Group, one of China’s largest and most politically connected seafood companies has struck agreements with Pacific Seafoods and Clearwater to import Dungeness crab and lobster respectively. The deal was struck during meetings at last month’s Seafood Expo in Boston. The company had been looking for more strategic partners to satisfy strong Chinese demand for its lobster and crab imports. In addition to its successful importing business, Zhangzidao is China’s largest domestic scallop producer and has extensive branding recognition and distribution facilities.
In yesterday’s news we reported on a paper published in Marine Policy that alleged up to 1/3 of US wild caught seafood was from IUU fisheries and how the report was overly broad and not backed up by evidence. Today, we run a letter from the authors of the paper, Katrina Nakamura and Pramod Ganapathiraju, challenging our story. “Our initial results underwent 8 months of country-level review before peer review at Marine Policy to confirm scientific rigor. It's not perfect being the first attempt to measure IUU for US imports but the numbers are backed by a tower of old fashioned evidence and solid as science can be,” writes Nakamura.
In other news Canada’s Fish, Food and Allied Workers plan to protest unfair cuts to Newfoundland’s Northern shrimp quota. The FFAW said the DFO is favoring the offshore sector in its decision that cut the inshore fishery’s quota more substantially compared with the offshore portion.
Finally, Gulf shrimp industry officials are rethinking the standards to the “Certified Authentic Louisiana” certification program after Louisiana processors said the requirements do not line up with how they source their shrimp. The processors said they routinely buy and pack shrimp from all Gulf states; a business tactic that was not considered in forming the certification.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.