Saving Seafood

Walmart recognizes suppliers’ efforts at sustainability-focused meeting

February 7, 2018 — To help Walmart continue expanding its sustainable seafood supply, the largest global retailer recently met with several large United States seafood suppliers, along with sustainability certifiers and other groups.

The retailer, which operates more than 5,400 Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in the U.S., also recognized three suppliers at the 1 February “Sustainability Summit” at Walmart’s headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Munhall, Pennsylvania-based The Fishin’ Company was recognized for partnering with Walmart to source its first four-star BAP certified tilapia, Mark Eastham, Walmart’s senior manager for sustainability, told SeafoodSource.

Meanwhile, Jacksonville, Florida-based wholesaler Beaver Street Fisheries was recognized for “its work with Walmart to support a more sustainable shrimp supply chain,” Eastham said.

Frozen seafood supplier North Atlantic Inc., based in Portland, Maine, was recognized for its engagement in Fishery Improvement Projects across the globe.

“They were also the first supplier to sign up for the Ocean Disclosure Project,” Eastham said. North Atlantic also operates Bali Seafood International, which is building a commercially sponsored fishery management model for small-boat fisheries in Indonesia.

Around 75 suppliers in total attended the sustainability summit, along with representatives of the Global Aquaculture Alliance’s Best Aquaculture Practices program, the Marine Stewardship Council, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, and the Global Sustainable Seafood Initiative.

“This forum provides us with the opportunity to reflect on what we have accomplished and what we can do to accelerate progress toward sustainability – so that we can enjoy not only a vibrant seafood industry but vibrant oceans,” Eastham said.

By 2025, Walmart will expand and enhance sustainable sourcing to cover 20 key commodities.

“This is an important issue for Walmart, as seafood is one of the commodities we have pledged to be a part of our long-term sustainability commitments,” Eastham said.

Walmart is working with sustainable seafood suppliers that share the retailer’s commitment to providing sustainable seafood to its customers, he said.

“Our goal is to build transparency and continuous improvement with the seafood supply chain, so that we can build confidence and provide for our customers now and in the future,” Eastham said.

At the meeting, Walmart executives highlighted the retailer’s progress in sourcing sustainable seafood to date and discussed the company’s future goals. Eastman said by 2025, “based on certain factors including price and demand,” Walmart U.S., Sam’s Club, and Walmart Canada will require all canned light and white tuna suppliers to source from fisheries that are either third-party certified or engaged in fishery improvement projects (FIPs). The company has also committed to carrying FAD-free and pole and line canned tuna in its U.S., Canadian, and ASDA-brand stores, Eastham said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Bering Sea Crab Fisheries Receive Certifications Recognizing Their Sustainability

February 7, 2018 — Five Alaska crab fisheries, including two Bering Sea ones, have met the Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) Standard.

According to the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), the Eastern Bering Sea tanner crab is newly certified under the Alaska RFM for this year. Aleutian Islands’ golden king crab also received a new certification.

In terms of re-certified crab fisheries, Bristol Bay red king crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab, and the Eastern Bering Sea snow crab all completed the assessment process successfully.

ASMI’s RFM model is based on the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations code and guidelines for credible certification, which assures buyers that the crab is sourced from responsibly managed, sustainable fisheries.

Read the full story at KNOM

 

Alaska: Five crab fisheries meet stringent criteria

January 26, 2018 — Five crab fisheries in the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands have met the stringent requirements for certification under the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute’s Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management program, two of them for the first time.

The newly certified fisheries were identified by ASMI on Jan. 18 as the Eastern Bering Sea Tanner crab and Aleutian Islands golden king crab. The recertified fisheries were the Bristol Bay red king crab, St. Matthew Island blue king crab and Eastern Bering Sea snow crab.

“Both the reassessed crab fisheries and the new additions scored high in each of the assessment criteria exemplifying their fisheries management excellence,” said Susan Marks, sustainability director for ASMI.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Seafood industry seeks new value in fish parts

January 15, 2018 — State seafood marketers are rebranding fish parts as “specialty” products and mapping a path for millions more dollars in sales.

Alaska’s fisheries produce more than 5 billion pounds of seafood each year. When all the fish is headed and gutted or filleted and all the crab legs are clustered, it leaves about 3 billion pounds of trimmings. Some is turned into meal and oil, but for the most part, the “gurry” is ground up and discharged into local waterways.

“Whether that’s heads or guts, milt, or meal or oil or something else, it should be held in high regard,” said Andy Wink, a seafood economist formerly with the McDowell Group. “These are products that are out of our normal range but they are specialty items serving niche markets.”

A new Analyses of Specialty Alaska Seafood Products report compiled for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute takes a look at uses for fish heads, oil, meal, internal organs, crab products, roe, herring fillets, arrowtooth flounder, spiny dogfish and skates.

It makes the point that Alaska’s combined seafood catches, valued at roughly $2 billion at the docks and twice that when processors sell to their buyers, could be worth an additional $700 million or more if so called “specialty” products were added to the mix.

Take fish heads, for example. Alaska produces about 1 billion pounds of fish heads per year, which likely account for most of the processing waste, the report said. Just 1 percent is sold as frozen heads, although a single large salmon head can fetch up to $5 a pound at Beijing supermarkets, according to previous reports. Increasing the frozen market alone could add $100 million to processors’ sales, the report said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

 

Alaska’s seafood marketing agency expands its reach

December 1, 2017 — On a domestic and international scale, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute expanded its reach over the past year to promote domestic and overseas sales of wild Alaska seafood, and educate the industry on seafood technical issues.

In presentations Nov. 28, at the start of ASMI’s three-day All Hands meeting in Anchorage, some 200 participants heard progress reports on these and other related issues, including ASMI’s sustainability program.

Fisheries market researcher Andy Wick, presenting for the McDowell Group in Juneau, noted that the cumulative first wholesale value of wild Alaska seafood from 1959 through 2016 totaled $170 billion, equal to the value of all major professional sports teams in North America.

Eighty percent of the state’s commercial seafood harvests from 2011 through 2015 was in high volume groundfish, including Pollock and cod, while salmon garnered on average 15 percent of the catch, halibut and black cod 1 percent, and crab 1 percent.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

A closer look at the value of Alaska’s seafood industry

October 23, 2017 — Alaska’s fishing fleet of 9,400 vessels would span nearly 71 miles if lined up from bow to stern.

And Alaska’s fishing industry catches and processes enough seafood each year to feed every person on the planet one serving, or a serving for each American every day for more than a month.

Those are just a few of the fish facts highlighted in the annual “Economic Value of Alaska’s Seafood Industry” report compiled by the McDowell Group for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute.

The report breaks down the numbers of fishermen, processors, species caught, values and more by region.

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

Is having a special week in Seattle enough to make Alaska herring cool again?

July 5, 2017 — Last week in Seattle, one kind of Alaska fish was served in dozens of restaurants around the city. It was in everything from pâté to tacos and piled high on open-faced sandwiches. One chef even used a pickled piece as a cocktail garnish. 

But it wasn’t Alaska’s famous wild sockeye salmon or Pacific halibut. It was Alaska herring — a small, oily fish — and it was all part of the third annual Alaska Herring Week in Seattle.

It’s part of an effort by a group of fishermen and the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute to try and revitalize a small Western Alaska fishery, which has been declining over the last decade.

Alaska Herring Week event coordinator Zachary Lyons said 54 restaurants and four grocery stores in the Seattle area participated in Herring Week this year. It started in 2015 with just eight restaurants, and 33 participated in 2016. This year’s event included The Whale and the Carpenter and Bar Melusine, restaurants both associated with Renee Erickson, winner of the 2016 James Beard Best Chef Northwest Award.

Lyons, who spent last week eating herring at up to five restaurants a day, said some consider the fish old-fashioned, destined to be canned or pickled on a shelf at the grocery store. But there are other culinary uses for the fish. Herring flesh cooks into a rich brown color and has a light fish flavor, similar to trout. No two herring dishes he ate during the week were alike, Lyons said.

“It’s really versatile,” he said. “It’s amazing to see what people are doing with it.”

Read the full story at Alaska Dispatch News

RFM Certification Underway for Five Alaska Crab Fisheries, ASMI Calls for Stakeholders Input

May 23, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — It’s been five years since the Bering Sea king and snow crab fisheries were certified as responsibly managed against the FAO-based standards under the Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) Certification Program.

Today, the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute announced that stakeholders who want to review the draft re-assessment reports for Bristol Bay Red King crab (Paralithodes camtschaticus), St. Matthew Island Blue King crab (Paralithodes platypus) and Eastern Bering Sea Snow crab (Chionoecetes opilio) and new assessments for Eastern Bering Sea Tanner Crab (Chionoecetes bairdi), Aleutian Islands Golden King Crab (Lithodes aequispinus) can register their interest to:

Jean Ragg Alaska RFM Scheme Administrator,
Global Trust Certification Ltd.
Quayside Business Park,
Mill Street, Dundalk,
County Louth,
Ireland
T: +353 (0) 42 9320912
F: +353 (0) 42 9386864
E: jean.ragg@saiglobal.com

Stakeholders should register their interest with name, organization and e-mail contact details to Global Trust Certification at the above address, preferably by e-mail.

“Once available, the Draft Assessment Reports will then be sent directly to the registered stakeholders’ e-mail address,” said a spokesperson for the Certification Body (CB) Global Trust Certification.  The reports will also be available via http://www.gtcert.com/ alaskarfm/.

The assessments will be using the latest version of the standard. The new version 1.3 (V1.3) was adopted by the ASMI board of directors in November 2015 for use in all new fisheries that wish to be certified and for fisheries seeking re-certification to the Alaska RFM program from January 1, 2016.

A separate web-announcement will be made notifying stakeholders of the commencement of the 30-day Stakeholder Comment Period for the above mentioned Alaska crab fisheries Draft Assessment Reports.

For information on the history of crab certifications under the Alaska standard click here.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission. 

Seafood groups praise Trump’s “Buy American” executive order

April 25, 2017 — President Donald Trump’s 18 April “Buy American, Hire American” Executive Order has been positively received by some U.S. seafood trade groups, who say it will help the domestic seafood industry.

Representatives of industry groups in Alaska and the U.S. states on the Gulf of Mexico said the executive order will help them create jobs for Americans.

“In order to promote economic and national security and to help stimulate economic growth, create good jobs at decent wages, strengthen our middle class, and support the American manufacturing and defense industrial bases, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to maximize…through terms and conditions of federal financial assistance awards and federal procurements, the use of goods, products, and materials produced in the United States,” the order states.

In addition, the federal government must “rigorously enforce and administer the laws governing entry into the United States of workers from abroad,” including section 212(a)(5) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, according to the order.

C. David Veal, executive director of the American Shrimp Processors Association in Biloxi, Mississippi, said Trump had helped protect U.S. fishing communities with his executive order.

“We appreciate this effort and the Trump Administration’s ongoing efforts to restore the competitive position of the country. This is the strongest effort by any administration to ensure that U.S. laws designed to promote the purchase of domestically produced products are effectively enforced,” Veal said.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource.com

Alaska Halibut’s Responsible Fisheries Management Certification is Renewed

February 13, 2017 — SEAFOOD NEWS — The Alaska halibut fishery has been awarded continued certification to the Alaska Responsible Fisheries Management (RFM) Certification Program. Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI) announce the finding late last week.

This is the first reassessment of Alaska halibut under Alaska’s RFM program, after initially being certified in April 2011. The fishery is also certified by the Marine Stewardship Council’s program. The fishery client is the Fishing Vessel Owners Association, based in Seattle.

In the more than 125 management standards used in RFM sustainability certification, the Alaska halibut fishery received highest marks in all but one: observer coverage. Although National Marine Fisheries Service changed the federal observer program to include the halibut longline fleet in 2013, the new plan, which was paid for by the halibut industry, was fraught with problems. Many longline vessels cannot support an additional observer onboard without significant impact on their crew size and efficiency, so have preferred electronic monitoring (EM) as an alternative data and observation source.

The assessment report includes details for what it describes as a “minor” non-conformance.

“For 2016, 58 fixed-gear vessels 40-57.5 ft LOA will [sic] participate in the EM selection pool and will carry EM systems as described in the EM Plan. The Observer Program Annual Report (NMFS 2015a) and the Observer Program Supplement Environmental Assessment (NMFS 2015b) have highlighted the data gaps caused by not having any observer information on vessels less than 40 ft LOA. In 2014, vessels less than 40 ft took about 20% (in value) of the longline halibut catch in Alaska (Fissel et al. 2015). NMFS recommended in its 2016 Deployment Plan138 that vessels less than 40ft LOA be considered for electronic monitoring in the future, and there are plans to partially implement EM in this sector in 2017.”

Details of the assessment can be found in the Final Assessment Report.

For more information on Alaska RFM certification, visit here.

This story originally appeared on SeafoodNews.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission