June 1, 2023 — John McCurdy of Lubec, Maine, holds the distinction of having run the last herring smokehouse in the USA. Sit down to talk to him about it, and you’ll find that at age 92, he is still mad about the US Food and Drug Administration shutting him down in 1991. “What happened is, some people in New York City got botulism from smoked whitefish out in the Great Lakes. So, they made a law that all smoked fish had to be eviscerated before they were salted. Well, you know we bought over 100 hogsheads [120,000] at a time, and those boats wanted to unload fast and get back out fishing. There’s no way we could gut those fish.”
McCurdy’ smokehouse was already a labor-intensive business, with 24 people doing everything from brining the fish, loading the smokehouse, moving fish upward in the smokehouse over the course of an 8-week curing process, and then skinning, boning, and packing it. And it was all hand work, “Artisanal” it would be called today. The workers made the boxes for packing, carefully laid the fish in, and nailed the lids on. Nothing in the entire operation was automated; it relied on human beings using their judgment as to how much brine to soak the fish into when the fish were ready. “If they rattle when you bring them down, they’re ready,” says McCurdy. “We sold 15,000 boxes a year. We sold to Mom & Pop stores, 100 boxes here, a hundred there.