October 28, 2020 — Pacific Seafood has won a multi-year partnership with the Pac-12 Conference, and it will now serve as the official meat and seafood provider of the conference.
Pac-12 is comprised of 12 leading United States universities on the West Coast.
October 1, 2020 — Pacific Seafood confirmed over the weekend that their Warrenton plant has a total of 94 positive COVID-19 cases. Of those cases, 86 of them were from last week, while eight were from the week prior.
Clatsop County’s Public Health Department released a notice last week reporting a “major outbreak” at Pacific’s Warrenton plant. According to the report, 77 out of the plant’s 159-member night shift tested positive for the virus. As a result, Pacific temporarily suspended operations as they tested their day shift workers.
September 28, 2020 — The results of testing completed at the end of last week show the current coronavirus outbreak among workers at processing plant in Warrenton, Oregon, U.S.A. have bumped the count of affected employees to 94, up from the 77 announced last week.
However, the company’s most recent round of testing, conducted on Thursday and Friday, 24 and 25 September, revealed only five positive COVID-19 tests out of 106 workers, with one test result still pending.
July 9, 2020 — A positive COVID-19 test has been reported from a new hire at the Pacific Seafood processing plant in Warrenton, Oregon.
The Oregon Health Authority plans to employ contact tracing and other measures in what Clatsop County leaders described as a “joint decision.” The Daily Astorian reported that there had been “several days of tensions” between the county, the health authority, and Pacific over how to deal with the case.
June 22, 2020 — Pacific Seafood has reached a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over Clean Water Act violations at their crab and shrimp processing plants in Westport, Washington, according to an EPA press release.
More than 2,000 violations had been recorded by the EPA during an unannounced inspection in 2017. Among them were discharge limit violations as well as incorrect sampling and incomplete or inadequate reporting.
June 12, 2020 — Pacific Seafood has reopened some of its five facilities in Newport, Oregon, U.S.A., that were hit by a coronavirus outbreak last week, with 132 of its workers testing positive for COVID-19.
The Pacific Surimi and Pacific Bio plants reopened in a limited capacity on Wednesday, 10 June, according to Pacific Seafood General Counsel Tony Dal Ponte. Pacific Fillet restarted some operations on Thursday, 11 June, and the Pacific Whiting and Pacific Shrimp facility remain closed, Dal Ponte said.
June 9, 2020 — Positive COVID-19 tests for 124 employees of Pacific Seafood and its contractors have led the company to suspend operations at its five processing facilities in Newport, Oregon, U.S.A.
The Clackamas, Oregon-based company said 53 of its employees and an additional 71 locally-based contractors tested positive for COVID-19, out of 376 workers tested, as of Sunday, 7 June.
May 19, 2020 — Two of the North Coast’s largest seafood processors have reopened in time for one of Oregon’s biggest fisheries after an outbreak of the coronavirus among workers.
Pacific Seafood in Warrenton and Bornstein Seafoods in Astoria are returning to business with numerous safety precautions in place to prevent the spread of the virus.
Fishing, an industry that always juggles some degree of uncertainty even in the best conditions, now faces many more unknowns because of the coronavirus.
“The whole thing is a nightmare,” said Lori Steele, the executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Association.
May 11, 2020 — Pacific Seafood temporarily closed a plant in Warrenton, Oregon, U.S.A. after a worker tested positive for COVID-19 last week. It was the first positive coronavirus test for Pacific Seafood, which is among the largest seafood companies in the United States.
John King, the general manager of the plant in Warrenton, released a statement late last week saying the seafood giant is now among “many businesses that have been directly touched by COVID-19.”
April 28, 2020 — In the midst of a near-nationwide lockdown that has drastically shifted the consumer market for seafood in the United States, companies of all sizes are adding direct-to-consumer sales outlets.
In early March, as most restaurants across the country closed or limited to doing take-out only due to social distancing restrictions imposed to prohibit the spread of COVID-19, a huge chunk of the nation’s seafood market disappeared within the space of a couple of weeks.