Saving Seafood

LIVE FROM SENA: Plenty of Fish in the Sea

March 9, 2016 — In the immediate wake of the 2016 Seafood Expo North America, the overwhelming impression is of bounty. As always, there was a plethora of product to sample, with plenty of standout items. Traversing the show floor at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center this week, Progressive Grocer noted even more breaded/crusted offerings than in past years, with shrimp, crab, clams, calamari, oysters, catfish, cod, tilapia, grouper, haddock and rainbow trout all getting the crunchy treatment, some in the form of bite-sized chunks. Also observed: a continuing trend towards zesty spices, sauces and marinades, with Southwestern flavors – as evidenced by the fish tacos served up by Miramar, Fla.-based Regal Springs, which donated 5 pounds of tilapia for every taco sampled to hunger relief nonprofit SeaShare – and sriracha particularly prevalent.

At the National Fish & Seafood booth, Nancy Peterson, VP of marketing at the Gloucester, Mass.-based company, was particularly excited about the company’s newest product introduction under its Matlaw’s brand: the seven-SKU Big Bag Value line, which Peterson noted offers on-trend flavor, variety and affordable price in clear, super-sized bilingual (English and Spanish) packaging enabling customers to see just what they’re purchasing. Among the products in the convenient frozen line are Shrimp Jalapeño Mac & Cheese Bites, leveraging consumer interest in breaded, bite-sized, spicy items. National Fish & Seafood is considering adding a lobster option to the line, according to Peterson, who adds that the company gets many of its ideas for retail products from items developed for foodservice. “That’s worked very well for us,” she asserted.

Read the full story at Progressive Grocer

Cape group pushes dogfish as viable seafood option

March 9, 2016 — BOSTON — The Seafood Expo is the largest seafood show in North America covering over 516,000 square feet of exhibition space this week at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.

For the second year in a row, members of the Cape Cod Commercial Fishermen’s Alliance spent three days talking dogfish with international and national buyers and sellers, and executive chefs at the show as part of an ongoing campaign to put the small shark on restaurant menus and on the dinner table as a sustainably caught, local whitefish.

“I think the market is gigantic and, if you talk to the fishermen in Chatham, they will tell you, you can’t drop a hook in the water without getting a dogfish. Between those two facts, (the market) will continue to build over time, but it’s already gaining a lot of traction,” said Michael Dimin, founder of Sea to Table, a company that markets artisanal fish directly to chefs across the country.

Processers successfully campaigned to get dogfish certified by the Marine Stewardship Council a few years back because the population was booming and the dogfish daily trip limit is kept low at 5,000 pounds. Chatham catches about 6 million pounds out of the state’s 9 million pounds in annual landings. The total landings of 16 million pounds fall far below the 50 million pounds scientists consider a sustainable catch.

Compared with other species, dogfish, a small coastal shark, are close to shore and easy to catch. Cod are now far offshore, as are haddock, and monkfish involves a three-day trip, hundreds of miles roundtrip in relatively small boats.

Read the full story at Cape Cod Times

New England Seafood Companies Highlight Traceability Practices in Saving Seafood Video

WASHINGTON (Saving Seafood) – March 8, 2016 – Sustainability and traceability are key themes of this year’s Seafood Expo North America, being held this week in Boston. A new video released today from Saving Seafood highlights how the U.S. seafood industry is focused on sustainable, traceable, and high-quality local seafood.  

Taken from a series of interviews conducted by Saving Seafood at last year’s Seafood Expo, the video features representatives from some of New England’s most prominent seafood companies sharing how they ensure that domestic seafood is fresh, sustainably sourced, and reliably traced.

In recent years, as concerns about seafood fraud have increased, companies cited their ability to closely monitor supply chains, from the minute the fish leaves the water to the moment the final product exits the warehouse as the kind of control and assurance their buyers demand. 

“When you’re dealing with the customer base we have, they want a premium product, MSC certified, and domestic,” said George Kouri, COO of Northern Wind of New Bedford, Massachusetts. “Everything we pack is exactly to the customer’s specification and labeled in accordance.”

One of the largest seafood shows in the United States, Seafood Expo North America brings together leading members of the domestic seafood community, including harvesters, processors, wholesalers, and retailers. While over 90 percent of seafood consumed in the U.S. is imported, Expo participants touted several major benefits of purchasing and consuming seafood caught in U.S. waters, chief among them the fact that U.S. law requires domestic fisheries be harvested at sustainable levels.

“For us, we’re able to trace those goods, in the case of scallops specifically, from the individual tow, all the way to the lotted box that ultimately ends up in the possession of our customers,” said John Furtado, the Executive Vice President of Eastern Fisheries, of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

Domestically caught seafood, in addition to coming from sustainably managed stocks, also has a clear advantage over imported fish when it comes to being properly labeled and accurately traced, according to many of the interviewees. Another benefit of locally sourced seafood, they say: it’s easier to track.

“Every single species that we are pulling out of the ocean and serving up to our clients, to our chefs, and to our specialty retailers are sustainable,” said Laura Foley Ramsden, co-owner of M.F. Foley, Inc. of Boston, and a former councilmember on the New England Fishery Management Council. “We’re able to go to our customers and inform them about how fisheries in the U.S. are managed, that it’s illegal to be overfishing, and that they are coming from a sustainable resource.”

“We’ve always known where all the fish came from, and where it went,” said Charlie Nagle, President of Boston’s John Nagle Co. “Everything we do is traceable.”

Among the Expo attendees featured in the video are representatives from Northern Wind; M.F. Foley Inc.; John Nagle Co.; and Eastern Fisheries. They each expressed to Saving Seafood the importance of maintaining not only a sustainably sourced product, but also one that is fresh and of the highest quality.

“We have extremely disciplined buying, so that we put people in each of the New England ports every single day looking at the fish, buying fish that’s only 24 to 48 hours out of the water,” said Ramsden. “If you’re that disciplined in your buying standards, you’re going to produce a better tasting, fresher fish that then ends up in plates all across America.”

The video is just a small sample of the many U.S. seafood providers who adhere to some of the world’s highest standards to bring high quality seafood to the domestic market. Saving Seafood is proud to support sustainable seafood providers, and will continue to highlight the stories of successful, sustainable U.S. fisheries.

View the video here

New Oceana Report Highlights Success and Value in Seafood Traceability

March 7, 2016 — WASHINGTON — Today, Oceana released a new report titled Fish Stories, showing the success and value in seafood traceability. The report, which highlights how seafood traceability benefits more than 15 companies interviewed along the supply chain – from fishermen and distributors to grocery stores and restaurants – was released at Seafood Expo North America in Boston.

This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here:http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160307006385/en/

“Traceability is the future of seafood,” said Beth Lowell, senior campaign director at Oceana. “Testimonials from these pioneers show that full-chain traceability isn’t just feasible, but that it’s also profitable. These businesses are telling the stories of their products, growing their seafood’s value, and establishing trust with their customers. Fishermen and wholesalers are able to earn more for their catch when they can tell the story of their fish, empowering consumers to make more informed decisions. The federal government should require boat-to-plate traceability for all seafood sold in the U.S. so that the entire supply chain can reap its benefits.”

Here are a few of their stories:

“We have learned that consumers care about where their fish comes from,” said Jared Auerbach, owner of Red’s Best in Boston, Massachusetts. “We built proprietary web-based software that starts at the point of unloading and makes it really easy for us to package the story of the catch so it stays with the fish throughout the supply chain.”

“Working directly with local growers, delivering product within 24 hours of harvest, and product traceability are all major components of our company’s success,” said Brad Blymier, founder and co-owner of War Shore Oyster Company in Onancock, Virginia. “Traceability of product is not a request, but rather an expectation of our customers. Empowering them with the knowledge of exactly where their shellfish was grown and harvested is an invaluable asset and has helped make War Shore Oyster Company a trusted supplier to the region’s top chefs, restaurants, grocers and shellfish connoisseurs.”

“Traceability in its simplest form is being able to see where the product is being caught and what stores or restaurants it ends up at,” said Reese Antley, vice president of Wood’s Fisheries in Port St. Joe, Florida. “However, Wood’s Fisheries sees traceability in a much more detailed way — we believe that you can’t have true sustainability and fishery improvements without traceability. For our customers, we are 100 percent transparent; if you want to know every step in the supply chain, it’s at your fingertips.”

“Seafood traceability allows the consumer to make factual decisions about their purchases,” said John Rorapaugh, director of sustainability at ProFish in Washington, D.C. “In turn, it allows our company to present the finest products, free of comparison to illegally harvested or inferior quality ones. Transparency is the key to a sustainable global food chain, and seafood traceability is a key component.”

Read the full story at KLTV

First US Live Lobster Traceability Program Launches at Whole Foods Market’s Portland, Maine Location and Adds Three New Members

March 5, 2016 — The following was released by Market Wired:

Trace My Lobster (http://tracemylobster.com), the first and only U.S. company to build a technology platform to trace a live lobster from its origins in the ocean to its destination on your plate, has added three new members to its growing list of participants: Maine Coast, Maine Fresh, and Calendar Islands. Over 60 lobstermen, three lobster wharves, three lobster dealers, and one national grocery chain now participate in the program that utilizes internet and smartphone technology to improve seafood traceability in the lobster fishery.

Since the program was launched at the Portland, Maine Whole Foods Market location two years ago, Trace My Lobster has been using uniquely coded tags, attached to every lobster caught by a participating lobsterman, to record when and where the lobster was caught, as well as the lobsterman who caught it. By entering the tag’s code online or using a smartphone app, consumers can follow the timeline of an individual lobster’s journey through the supply chain, verifying its source, freshness and story behind the lobsterman who caught it.

“As a leader in seafood sustainability and traceability initiatives, Whole Foods Market is pleased that our Portland, Maine location is the first grocery store in the U.S. to offer live lobster traceability from the lobster trap to the table using Trace My Lobster,” said Matt Mello, the North Atlantic Seafood Coordinator for Whole Foods Market. “Trace My Lobster is a meaningful way to showcase some of Maine’s hardest working lobstermen while providing full transparency to our customers.”

Trace My Lobster presents a new way for the lobster industry to meet the growing demand for seafood that is sustainably sourced, responsibly harvested, and reliably traced. In connecting lobstermen with retailers, the program provides participating grocery stores and restaurants the opportunity to distinguish themselves from their competitors by offering consumers complete transparency and fully traceable seafood. “The technology still relies on the traditional, and very important, supply chain between harvesters, wharfs dealers and distributors to bring the tagged lobster to market” stated Craig Rief, Founder of Trace My Lobster.

“Trace My Lobster is a unique and innovative program that allows us to convey the story behind the important connection we have with lobstermen and the high quality lobster our company is able to provide to our domestic and international customers,” said Tom Adams, CEO of Maine Coast, one of the newest participants in Trace My Lobster.

Trace My Lobster was developed in 2014 as a collaboration between Craig Rief and Jonathan Caron. Craig has over 10 years of experience in the lobster industry and currently serves as the President of the Maine Certified Sustainable Lobster Association, which represents some of the largest lobster companies in the U.S. and Canada. Jonathan has over 20 years of experience in technology and intellectual property through his previous employment at Vivendi Universal.

Joining Trace My Lobster is fast and easy for retailers. Grocery stores and restaurants can use their existing suppliers or Trace My Lobster can provide access to a list of participating suppliers. The same holds true for harvesters, wharfs and dealers that want to join.

“As an industry we have such a powerful story to tell, and believe that the Trace My Lobster program is a valuable and exciting innovation to help connect consumers with our narrative.” said Matt Jacobson, Executive Director of the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative. “Our mission is to encourage both chefs and consumers to make it Maine when choosing what product to consume, and with this program we can deliver the rich stories of our lobstermen who are committed to sustainably harvesting the best lobster on earth.”

About Trace My Lobster (http://tracemylobster.com)

Trace My Lobster enables consumers to follow the journey of their live lobster from trap to table. Trace My Lobster visualizes a lobster’s true supply chain, connecting harvesters and consumers to a deeper understanding of the impact of lobster life-cycle from the ocean to the retailer. Trace My Lobster provides a comprehensive approach to supply chain transparency – a leading approach to traceable lobster and seafood traceability.

About Maine Coast (http://mainecoastcompany.com)

Maine Coast is a worldwide distributor of the finest North Atlantic seafood, specializing in shipping Maine and Canadian lobsters to both domestic and overseas locations. Maine Coast has more than 30 years of experience in the global seafood industry.

About Maine Fresh (http://maine-fresh.com)

Maine Fresh operates a lobster wharf in Harpswell, Maine and employs an innovative business model that uses natural foods from Maine and responsibly harvested seafood to produce value-added, healthy, good tasting foods in an effort to distribute a portion of its sale proceeds back to the community. Maine Fresh donates 10 percent of its online sales back to the community to support educational initiatives creating social change through transformative educational opportunities at the local and global levels.

About Calendar Islands (http://calendarislandsmainelobster.com)

Founded in 2009 Calendar Islands Maine Lobster Company is owned by 38 hard-working Maine lobstermen creating a true marriage of culinary distinction to the Maine Lobster fishery. With a goal making lobster available year-round, Calendar Islands is an industry leader in quality, value and new culinary concepts. No longer just a seasonal product, Calendar Islands value added Maine Lobster provides consumers an exciting variety of fresh and frozen products to energize and motivate the customer base. Calendar Islands supports the local community’s maritime heritage, respects the environment and its inherent link to the natural world.

About Whole Foods Market ® (http://wholefoodsmarket.com)

Founded in 1980 in Austin, Texas, Whole Foods Market (wholefoodsmarket.com) (NASDAQ: WFM), is the leading natural and organic food retailer. As America’s first national certified organic grocer, Whole Foods Market was named “America’s Healthiest Grocery Store” byHealth magazine. The company’s motto, “Whole Foods, Whole People, Whole Planet”™ captures its mission to ensure customer satisfaction and health, Team Member excellence and happiness, enhanced shareholder value, community support and environmental improvement. Thanks to the company’s more than 88,000 team members, Whole Foods Market has been ranked as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in America byFORTUNE magazine for 18 consecutive years. In fiscal year 2014, the company had sales of more than $14 billion and currently has more than 430 stores in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. For more company news and information, please visit media.wfm.com.

About the Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative (http://www.lobsterfrommaine.com/)

The Maine Lobster Marketing Collaborative (MLMC), founded in 2013, is funded by Maine Lobster harvesters, dealers and processors to grow demand, both for whole live lobster and a variety of value-added products. The MLMC supports that objective by promoting the core values of the Maine Lobster industry, which are sustainability and traceability that’s deeply rooted in tradition. Maine Lobster achieved the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification in 2013, allowing Maine Lobster to certify its long-standing sustainable practices. The industry has been self-regulating for more than 150 years.

Trace Seafood, LLC, the parent company of Trace My Lobster (http://tracemylobster.com), will be at this year’s Seafood Expo North America, at Booth 178.

Read the release here

2016 Seafood Expo North America Excellence Awards Finalists Announced

March  7, 2016 — The following was released by the Seafood Expo North America:

The 12 finalists for the 2016 Seafood Excellence Awards, the prestigious best new products competition at Seafood Expo North America, have been announced. Winners of the competition will be presented during the Seafood Excellence Awards ceremony, which will take place on Sunday, March 6, 2016 at 3:30pm in the Demonstration Theater during Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America in Boston, USA.

The Seafood Excellence Awards annually recognize the product leaders in the North American seafood market. Each year, exhibitors have the opportunity to submit their new products for consideration. Products are evaluated by three seafood industry experts based on their uniqueness and appropriateness to the market, taste profile, packaging, market potential, convenience, nutritional value and originality.

The 2016 finalists were selected from nearly 60 entries in the exposition’s New Product Showcase and compete for two awards: Best New Foodservice and Best New Retail Product.

The finalists for the 2016 Seafood Excellence Awards are:

Absolutely Lobster®, Booth #3014
Absolutely Lobster® Homemade Tomato Sauces

 

Alaskan Jack’s Seafood Corporation, Booth #2305

Frontier Harvest Alaskan Jack’s Gold Premium Pineapple-Teriyaki Sockeye

 

Aqua Star, Booth #2005

Crab & Shrimp Seafood Feast

 

Azuma Foods International Inc., USA, Booth #321

Tobikko Umami

 

Bantry Bay America Inc., Booth #2957

Mussels in a Creamy Stout Sauce

 

French Creek Seafoods, Booth #2833
Kickin’ Seafood Chili
High Liner Foods, Booth #1005
Simply Sauce Seafood Bites

 

Phillips Foods, Booth #959
Shrimp Toast

 

Premier Marine Canada, Booth #2981
Waterview Market Shrimp with Sauce

 

Santa Barbara Smokehouse, Booth #2310
Honey Glazed Oak Roasted Salmon

Trident Seafoods, Booth #805
SeaFusions™ Pacific Cod Bites

 

Vinh Hoan Corporation, Booth #2742

Char Marked Barramundi

 

Each finalist’s product will be showcased during the three-day event in Boston.

The Seafood Excellence Awards serves as the North American extension of the Seafood Excellence Global Awards competition, held at Seafood Expo Global in Brussels, Belgium. Both Seafood Excellence Awards and Seafood Excellence Global are organized by Diversified Communications, producers of Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global and Seafood Expo Asia.

View all of the entries of the Seafood Excellence Awards.   
SeafoodSource.com, a publication of Diversified Communications is the official media for Seafood Expo North America & Seafood Processing North America. As the global leader in seafood industry news and information, SeafoodSource.com will extensively cover the event.

Seafood-industry buyers and processors can learn more about Seafood Expo North America & Seafood Processing North America and register to attend by visiting the exposition’s website, seafoodexpo.com/north-america.

About Seafood Expo North America and Seafood Processing North America

Seafood Expo North America and Seafood Processing North America, formerly called the International Boston Seafood Show and Seafood Processing America, is North America’s largest seafood exposition. Thousands of buyers and suppliers from around the world attend the annual, three-day exposition to meet, network and do business. Attending buyers represent importers, exporters, wholesalers, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels, and other retail and foodservice companies. Exhibiting suppliers offer the newest seafood products, processing and packaging equipment, and services available in the seafood market. The exposition is sponsored by the National Fisheries Institute. SeafoodSource.com is the official media. The exposition is produced by Diversified Communications, the international leader in seafood-industry expositions and media. For more information, visit: www.seafoodexpo.com/north-america

About Diversified Communications

Diversified Communications is a leading international media company providing market access, education and information through global, national and regional face-to-face events, digital products, publications and television stations. Diversified serves a number of industries including: seafood, food service, natural and organic, healthcare, commercial marine and business management. The company’s global seafood portfolio of expositions and media includes Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, Seafood Expo Global/Seafood Processing Global, Seafood Expo Asia and SeafoodSource.com. Diversified Communications, in partnership with SeaWeb, also produces SeaWeb Seafood Summit, the world’s premier seafood conference on sustainability. Based in Portland, Maine, USA, Diversified has divisions in the Eastern United States, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Thailand and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit: www.divcom.com

View a PDF of the release

MASSACHUSETTS: Team Gloucester packs them in at international expo

March 7, 2016 — BOSTON — There was no shortage of foreign languages filtering around the cavernous exhibition hall at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center when the international Seafood Expo North America show opened Sunday.

Visitors walking the aisles criss-crossing the exhibition floor among the 1,240 exhibitors could hear, among other tongues, snippets of Japanese, English, Spanish, Norwegian, Hebrew, Vietnamese and Korean.

And Gloucester. They most definitely could hear Gloucester, whether they wanted to or not.

Operating with a basic strategy of go-big or go-home, Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken and her merry band of Gloucesterites certainly made their presence known at one of the largest seafood shows in the world.

“Come to the city of Gloucester booth at 1671 and try some of our red fish soup, made with local Gloucester fish,” Romeo Theken announced over and over, and with authority, into the microphone as thousands of visitors and exhibitors milled past. “Gloucester fish is fresh fish. Check it out at www.gloucesterfresh.com.”

Not satisfied with just belting out a looping commentary and commercials for her city, Romeo Theken began walking through the crowd holding a redfish fillet in her hand, beseeching the assembled to smell it.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: A win for Gloucester Fresh

February 24, 2016 — For former Gloucester Mayor Carolyn Kirk, it was a rare home game in her role as the executive secretary of the state’s Seaport Economic Council. For the city, it was another step forward in its efforts to brand and market its seafood and seafood businesses.

The Seaport Economic Council and its chairwoman, Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, rolled into Gloucester on Tuesday morning, meeting for more than two hours at the Tavern on the Harbor and awarding 10 state grants worth $5.15 million to 10 Massachusetts entities — including $151,000 to the city’s Gloucester Fresh Seafood Innovation Program.

The Gloucester grant, according to city Economic Development Director Sal Di Stefano, will help the city expand its campaign to promote its seafood harvest locally, regionally and nationally. That expansion includes the nine-day rental of two digital billboards along Route 1 in advance of the city’s participation in the annual Seafood Expo North America in Boston during the first week of March.

Di Stefano said the billboards alone are expected to convey the city’s branding message to at least 400,000 commuters during the city’s run on them.

He said the grant money also will be used to defray the city’s overall costs of participating in the Seafood Expo North America show and the Boston Seafood Festival in each of the next two years.

Read the full story from the Gloucester Daily Times

MASSACHUSETTS: Gloucester must relentlessly promote locally harvested seafood

February 20, 2016 — Gloucester needs to be relentless in promoting the benefits of its locally harvested seafood, as well as the fishermen and processors that send it to market, a city official told the Fisheries Commission this week.

Economic Development Director Sal Di Stefano said the city is addressing the challenges of operating in the modern, international seafood market with a marketing strategy designed to promote the city, its fresh seafood bounty, its fishermen and its shore-side businesses to the seafood-consuming world.

“If we don’t do this, other people will,” Di Stefano told the commission Thursday night during a discussion on the city’s plans for the upcoming Seafood Expo North America show in Boston. “And they will try to take it from us.”

The city’s new branding campaign, “Gloucester Fresh,” is at the heart of the promotional strategy aimed at helping consumers identify seafood harvested from the waters around Cape Ann and landed in Gloucester while appreciating its nutritional and sustainable benefits.

Working with Salem-based Sperling Interactive, the city is developing a website that Mayor Sefatia Romeo Theken is scheduled to launch at the beginning of the Seafood Expo during the first week of March.

Read the full story at Gloucester Daily Times

Proposed Rule – 1st Phase of a U.S. Seafood Traceability Program to Combat IUU Fishing Products & Seafood Fraud

February 9, 2016 — The following was released by NOAA

Today, NOAA Fisheries is publishing the proposed rule to establish the first phase of a seafood traceability program through the collection or retention of data regarding the harvest, landing, and chain of custody of certain fish and fish products imported into the United States that have been identified as particularly vulnerable to IUU fishing and seafood fraud. It is important to note that there will be no new reporting requirements for domestic landings of wild-caught seafood. Similar information for domestically harvested seafood is already reported under numerous state and federal regulatory requirements.

Establishing a traceability program is a key tool for ensuring these illicit activities are prevented from entering U.S. Commerce and helping combat them in the complex system of international seafood trade.

This proposed rule is designed to build on existing resources and processes—maximizing effectiveness and efficiency, while minimizing impacts on the fishing and seafood trade community. To achieve these objectives, NOAA Fisheries is encouraging detailed comments from the fishing and seafood industry, conservation community, and other interested stakeholders engaged with sustainable seafood. Additionally, we have scheduled two webinar conference calls in February and an in-person public meeting on March 7, at the Seafood Expo N. America in Boston to provide opportunities for anyone to ask questions.