Saving Seafood

Florida Delegation Wants Commerce Department to Quickly Distribute Stimulus Funds for Fishing Industry

April 17, 2020 — The Florida delegation on Capitol Hill is urging the U.S. Commerce Department to quickly move to distribute funds from the $2.2 trillion coronavirus stimulus enacted at the end of last month to help the fishing business.

As part of the stimulus package, $300 million was included to help fisheries and Florida’s two senators–Republican U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott–and 25 of the state’s 27 members of the U.S. House sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Sec. Wilbur Ross on the matter on Wednesday.

“Florida’s recreational and commercial fishing industries are critically important to Florida’s tourism-based economy, as well as for the state and nation’s food security and have been hit especially hard during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Rubio’s office noted.

The Florida delegation also called on Ross to work U.S. Agriculture Sec. Sonny Perdue “ to expand seafood commodity purchases for nutrition programs, take further action to guide Florida’s fishing communities to new resources such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), and expedite consideration of the State of Florida’s pending Fisheries Disaster Declaration request related to severe red tide events which occurred between 2015 and 2019.”

Read the full story at Florida Daily

Massachusetts lawmakers call on government to help New England fisheries during COVID-19 crisis

April 6, 2020 — Members of Massachusetts’ congressional delegation are calling on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to give New England fisheries a needed boost as they battle through the COVID-19 outbreak.

U.S. senators Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren, along with U.S. representatives William Keating and Seth Moulton, on 2 April sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue asking him to use part of the USD 9.5 billion (EUR 8.8 billion) earmarked for agricultural producers – from the USD 2.2 trillion (EUR 2.0 trillion) CARES Act Congress passed in late March – to help seafood processors and other companies.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

US Chamber analysis shows helping all sectors hit by tariffs would cost $39 billion

July 31, 2018 — A new U.S. Chamber of Commerce analysis found that providing similar aid to all sectors affected by President Trump‘s tariffs would cost U.S. taxpayers $39 billion.

The Trump administration last week announced a $12 billion emergency aid package for the nation’s farmers who are taking a hard hit from retaliatory tariffs unloaded by China, Mexico, Canada and other trading partners because of the president’s imposition of tariffs.

The Chamber’s analysis shows that on top of the $12 billion that could be doled out to farmers as early as this fall, another $27.2 billion would be needed to help other sectors such as fishermen, cotton and fabric manufacturers and makers of steel and aluminum.

After Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced the agriculture aid last week, the Chamber decided to determine how much it would cost to provide a similar level of aid to each industry affected by the budding trade war.

Read the full story at The Hill

 

John McCain urges delay in new catfish inspection rules

September 1, 2017 — Sen. John McCain is mounting a last-minute plea to the U.S. Department of Agriculture to delay implementation of new catfish inspection rules slated to fully kick in Friday, saying all catfish inspections should be returned to the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration.

Mr. McCain said the new inspection regime under the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is a thinly-disguised trade barrier against Asian catfish imports at the hands of domestic farmers in southern states.

“This wasteful program is a classic example of shortsighted, anti-free market protectionism at its worst,” Mr. McCain wrote in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue this week.

“I request that you delay implementation of the USDA Catfish Inspection Program until Congress has an opportunity to reverse this duplicative, wasteful program,” he wrote.

Most fish is inspected by the FDA, but Congress — led by southern Republicans looking to protect their state’s industry — included language in the 2008 Farm bill that set the stage to transfer catfish inspections to a more intrusive process under FSIS.

Read the full story at the Washington Times