May 2, 2014 — Over the long term, it means that costs will rise. Fishermen will earn less, their profits halved and quartered by the rental payments they’ll have to make to people in suits just to go fishing. Yet consumers will pay more. Investors will be getting rich off of resources that used to belong to you.
Here's how it happens: catch shares. They are a type of fishing management system that became national policy in the United States in 2010 to encourage sustainable fishing. Catch shares accomplish this by capping the amount of fish that can be caught and doling out the rights to fishermen, and sometimes seafood processors and co-ops, to fish them.
That’s what the firm paid three years ago when it bought Bumble Bee Foods, the giant producer of shelf-stable seafood such as canned tuna. The purchase included the Bumble Bee subsidiary Snow’s Inc., best known for its creamy white clam chowder. Snow’s came with another perk: It owns the exclusive rights to 23 percent of the clams that dominate America’s canned clam industry, almost a quarter of the national supply for clam sauce, clam juice, clam soup, anything with clams.
Now, every time you sit down to a bowl of clam chowder in the United States, you’re probably padding profits for British investors.
It’s a scenario that has advocacy groups worried. “We shouldn’t be issuing control of our fisheries and access to our fisheries away from communities and to multinational corporations. It’s a no-brainer,” says Linda Behnken, the vice chair of the Alaska Sustainable Fisheries Trust, which works to strengthen fishing communities.
Increasingly, as the Snow’s deal illustrates, equity groups and corporations are poised to rule the seas through their investments. And if you eat seafood, then it ought to matter to you.
Over the long term, it means that costs will rise. Fishermen will earn less, their profits halved and quartered by the rental payments they’ll have to make to people in suits just to go fishing. Yet consumers will pay more. Investors will be getting rich off of resources that used to belong to you.
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