Revelations that $400 million that should have been used to promote seafood caught or farmed in the United States was instead used as part to pay for the running of the NOAA and its National Marine Fisheries Service has sparked anger in the commercial fishing industry from Florida to New England.
A Congressional Research Service report brings to light how the spirit and letter of the original law, the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act of 1954, and multiple amendments in later years have been ignored or abandoned, to the detriment of the domestic seafood industry.
"Beginning in 1979," the Congressional Research Service reported, "increasing amounts of Saltonstall-Kennedy dollars have been transferred to … NOAA's operations, research and facilities account," the agency's general operating budget.
Since 1982, the service continued, "the Saltonstall-Kennedy program has never allocated the minimum amount specified by law for industry projects."
From 2007 on, less than 10 percent of the tariff charges given to NOAA were used as the Saltonstall-Kennedy legislative history required.
Read the complete story from the Gloucester Times.
Read the Congressional Research Service report.