Saving Seafood

Carper, Coons ask NOAA to support fishermen, seafood processors in smaller states

May 4, 2020 — Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons, D-Delaware, and Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, both D-Connecticut, are asking the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration assistant administrator to be transparent, expedient and fair in determining how Fishery Disaster Assistance funding is allocated to fishermen and seafood processors across the country, and urged the agency to consider a minimum allocation for smaller coastal states.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has devastated fisheries, fisheries distributors, and fisheries processors, who are experiencing severe economic losses as domestic purchasing has plunged and exports have slowed. With limited capital, fishing communities — business owners, crews and processing plant workers — are facing unforeseen financial hardships that put their livelihoods at risk.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act appropriated $300 million to NOAA for fishery disaster assistance. However, NOAA and the Office of Management and Budget are still considering how to distribute these funds among impacted fishing states. Without a minimum allocation, larger operations may receive a disproportionate amount of available funds, leaving struggling small businesses in states like Delaware and Connecticut with little help — and little recourse.

Read the full story at The Milford Beacon

WASHINGTON: Fisheries finally get $8.4M aid with help of Murray, Cantwell

May 4, 2020 — After funds were held up for two years, Washington tribes and fishing communities will receive more than $8.4 million in fishery disaster assistance.

Washington Democratic Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell helped include the funding in a 2018 spending bill, according to a press release. However, the funds were held up by the Office of Management and Budget.

Murray and Cantwell sent a letter to the acting OMB director earlier this month, urging him to distribute the funds.

Read the full story at The Daily News

MASSACHUSETTS: Blue Harvest implements covid-19 safeguards

May 4, 2020 — Blue Harvest Fisheries adopted new safeguards to help protect workers from covid-19, including plexiglass enclosures on the processing line in its New Bedford, Mass., plant.

The company said Thursday that no workers have contracted the illness on the job, but two had tested positive for covid-19 over an 11-day period after apparently contracting it outside of work. The company reported those cases to the city Board of Health.

The company says it had already adopted a 25-point protocol for covid-19 “based on emerging best practices and had arranged for an independent company to conduct deep cleaning and disinfecting even before the anticipated closure order arrived.”

After closing at the end of business April 23, Blue Harvest staff working around the clock over the weekend installed three-sided plexiglass separations between workers’ stations on the  line, to improve social distancing on the plant floor before operations resumed Monday.

Common surfaces in the plant are cleaned frequently, followed by regular deep cleaning of the entire facility, according to Blue Harvest. All employees are required to wear facemasks and face shields on the production floor.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

Fishermen getting desperate as $300 million federal bailout stalls

May 4, 2020 — It has been more than a month since President Trump agreed to set aside $300 million in COVID-19 bailout money to help the beleaguered U.S. fishing industry, but regulators have yet to say who is eligible for financial rescue, much less distribute any of the money.

Maine fishermen are growing desperate, and lawmakers impatient, for the U.S. Department of Commerce to announce who qualifies for the bailout, how much money they can get, and how it can be spent. They want the president to release the $300 million immediately.

“With each day that passes absent this assistance, the frustration and economic damage mount,” said U.S. Sen. Susan Collins. “These disruptions have harmed the entire seafood supply chain … and the countless Maine communities whose cultures and economies are anchored by fisheries.”

The Commerce Department’s fisheries division refers reporters asking about the bailout delay to its website, which has remained virtually unchanged since March 27, the date that Trump signed the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that includes the seafood industry bailout into law.

Read the full story at the CentralMaine.com

Toyosu sales figures reveal crippling effect of COVID-19 on Japan’s seafood market

May 4, 2020 — Tokyo’s Toyosu Market is experiencing a drastic financial fallout as Japan reels from the economic shock of COVID-19.

From March to April, both the volume of seafood Japan’s largest seafood market handled and the prices it received had nosedived. But the crash has been uneven, reflecting a shift by Japanese consumers from eating out to cooking at home. Sales of luxury items like tuna have dropped significantly, while sales of fish more commonly cooked inside the home in Japan, such as salmon and hamachi, have not seen a significant falloff.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US restaurant chains closing, filing bankruptcy due to COVID-19

May 4, 2020 — Some U.S. restaurant chains have filed for bankruptcy, and many other U.S. restaurant seafood chains have been forced to temporarily close their doors due to the coronavirus pandemic.

West Palm Beach, Florida-based TooJay’s Original Gourmet Deli, which operates 24 restaurants, has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The chain, which offers a number of seafood dishes, said that two of its restaurants are closed, while the others remain open for takeout and delivery, Restaurant Business reported.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Liability Shield Is Next Coronavirus Aid Battle

May 4, 2020 — Senate Republicans’ efforts to shield companies from liability during the coronavirus pandemic sets the stage for a showdown with Democrats, as allies of businesses and labor fight over the terms under which the economy will emerge from its partial shutdown.

Senate lawmakers return to Washington this week to start working out the next round of relief for households and businesses, on top of almost $3 trillion approved so far. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who will control the shape of much of the next stimulus package, has called liability protections a must-have “red line” for Republicans, saying he won’t support Democrats’ call for further state and local aid without it.

U.S. busi­nesses fear a wave of lit­i­ga­tion as work­ers in meat-pro­cess­ing fa­cil­i­ties, gro­cery stores and other lo­ca­tions get sick or die from the Covid-19 ill­ness caused by the new coro­n­avirus. The U.S. Cham­ber of Com­merce warns that the risk of class-ac­tion claims and other suits could de­ter busi­nesses from re­open­ing their doors, even if they are act­ing in good faith to op­er­ate safely. The trade group has en­dorsed the idea of shield­ing com­pa­nies that fol­low fed­eral and state health-au­thor­ity guide­lines for curb­ing the spread of Covid-19.

Com­pa­nies have been em­pha­siz-ing the steps they are tak­ing to pro­tect work­ers, from dis­in­fect­ing fa­cil­i­ties and set­ting up plex­i­glass di­viders to op­er­at­ing on stag­gered shifts to al­low for more so­cial dis­tanc­ing. Re­tail busi­nesses such as gro­cery stores have rolled out re­quire­ments meant to pro­tect cus­tomers and staff, in­clud­ing re­quir­ing masks and lim­it­ing ca­pac­ity.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal

Massachusetts congressional delegation urges feds to include seafood in food aid purchases

May 4, 2020 — Members of the all-Democratic Massachusetts congressional delegation are pushing to include East Coast seafood in purchasing agreements funded by the federal Coronavirus Food Assistance Program.

Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Reps. William Keating and Seth Moulton said in a letter Friday to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue that when the U.S. Department of Agriculture begins its purchasing programs intended to assist those the pandemic has affected, the USDA should include domestic seafood.

Purdue in April announced that the USDA would be making about $19 billion in purchases through the coronavirus assistance program, the lawmakers said.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at the Bangor Daily News

In Alaska town, calls to shut down fishing season amid coronavirus fears

May 4, 2020 — Robin Samuelson grew up hearing stories about mass death in his Alaska community, victims of a pandemic so brutal that dogs were found feeding on human bodies.

The 68-year-old’s father-in-law was among the hundreds of children orphaned by the 1918 flu epidemic, which some scholars estimate killed at least 30 percent of the population in Alaska’s Bristol Bay region.

Some locals fear that history could repeat itself unless Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) shuts down the upcoming salmon fishery, which attracts more than 12,000 workers from across the country for a frenetic, two-month season that begins next month.

Dunleavy’s administration has pledged to implement safety measures to prevent the importation of the novel coronavirus, including a mandated two-week quarantine for arriving fishers. But some local officials say they’re not convinced the state can enforce those rules.

“Our streets, they start looking like Fifth Avenue in New York during the summer,” Samuelson said. “It puts you in a real funny mood listening to the stories [about the 1918 pandemic] and what our people had to go through.”

There have been no confirmed infections of the coronavirus in the region, and Alaska has one of the lowest infection rates of any state. It has recorded just 368 cases and nine deaths from covid-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Read the full story at The Washington Post

In America, the virus threatens a meat industry that is too concentrated

May 4, 2020 — What is the biggest concern about America’s food-supply chain? The White House worries that shoppers, even before summer, may find supermarket shelves empty of steaks, burgers, sausages or chicken. Donald Trump invoked emergency powers under the Defence Production Act, declaring that closure of meatpacking plants threatens “critical infrastructure”, on April 28th. Supposedly that will oblige them to stay open, after more than 20 had closed because of coronavirus outbreaks affecting thousands of workers. At least 20 workers have died.

Mr Trump’s order, and a vow that all will have protein, came after big meat producers warned that supply bottlenecks would cause shortages. In mid-April the boss of Smithfield Foods, a huge pork firm, spoke of looming “severe, perhaps disastrous” effects on the food chain. It had just shut a big slaughterhouse in South Dakota. On April 26th the head of Tyson Foods, which dominates America’s chicken production, chirped up to greater effect. In full-page ads in national papers, John Tyson said a “vulnerable” food-supply chain is “breaking” and asked government to help. Tyson has closed plants in Iowa and beyond.

The White House took the alarm seriously. An official there suggested that some 80% of America’s meat-processing capacity might shut, at least for a while. Already a quarter of the pig-slaughtering capacity has closed. In recent weeks farmers and meatpackers in several states had begun culling millions of chickens and killing pigs to be rendered for fat and tallow, or just buried. Every year American farmers produce over 50m tons of beef, pork, turkey and chicken, and over 33m cattle, 120m pigs and 9bn chickens are slaughtered.

Just how the president’s order will keep slaughterhouses open is not clear, but one aim is to give legal cover for firms that do operate. As more workers fall sick, and some die, the presidential order could help limit their liability.

Read the full story at The Economist