Saving Seafood

MASSACHUSETTS: Open Door, fishing vessel win food security grants

November 2, 2020 — The Open Door and a Gloucester fishing company will share in $5.9 million in state grants to help ensure a secure food supply chain for Massachusetts residents, particularly in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The administration of Gov. Charlie Baker announced the $5.9 million is being distributed to 47 recipients within the Massachusetts local food system, including farms, non-profit emergency food distributors, seafood harvesters, processors and other elements in the state’s food production and delivery system.

The Open Door, which operates food pantries in Gloucester and Ipswich and other food delivery services, received $201,073 to develop and implement an online food ordering and delivery system and enhance its Gloucester facility to provide more safe storage of locally produced food.

“We are reviewing software options now,” said Julie LaFontaine, president and CEO of The Open Door. “We expect to be rolling it out after the first of the new year.

The grant, part of the fourth round of funding from the state’s $36 million Food Infrastructure Security Grant program, also will help the non-profit on Emerson Avenue to expand its Mobile Market program throughout the Cape Ann community.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

Massachusetts: Budget funds GMGI project

August 1, 2018 — The new state budget Gov. Charlie Baker signed last week includes $150,000 for a new marine program to be run by the Gloucester Marine Genomics Institute in coordination with the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Department of Marine Fisheries.

It also carries $125,000 in matching grant money for Gloucester’s approaching 400th anniversary celebration, and money for service programs such as The Open Door, Wellspring House and The Grace Center.

But while a $2 million package to boost the Fishing Partnership — which provides health care coverage, safety training, and legal and financial services to fishermen and their families — and $1.3 million for new infrastructure and technology for the GMGI project are included in a House economic bill, those dollars are not in the Senate version and must be hashed out in conference committee, Andrew Tarr, chief aide to state Rep. Ann-Margaret Ferrante, confirmed Monday.

The funding for the GMGI/stateprogram  and the money to help with the planning for Gloucester’s 400th anniversary celebration in 2023 were both part of the $41.9 billion fiscal 2019 budget signed by the governor last Thursday.

The budget also included $75,000 to improve Gloucester’s public safety communications systems, but that money was vetoed by the governor. The House overrode the veto, Tarr said, but the state Senate had not yet taken up its override veto of that money as of Monday morning, he said.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times

 

MASSACHUSETTS: Poached fish served up by Gloucester food pantry

April 11, 2017 — About a half-dozen times a year, the folks at The Open Door in Gloucester receive a phone call — or even a knock on their Emerson Avenue door — to see if they’re interested in some donations of fresh seafood.

The offers don’t arrive from entrepreneurial fishermen or someone looking to unload a bunch of seafood off the books.

The offers come from the Environmental Police. And the answer is almost uniformly yes.

“Generally, they call, but sometimes they just show up,” said Julie LaFontaine, The Open Door’s executive director. “Our mission is to alleviate the impact of hunger in our community, so when we have the opportunity of receiving free food — especially something as healthy and beneficial as locally caught, fresh seafood, we take it and then we distribute it through our food pantry.”

The Environmental Police have made a practice of donating seized seafood — or seafood unable to be returned to the water — to social service agencies, such as food pantries, shelters, veterans organizations and the like.

“It something that we’ve been doing since before I even came on the force and something that we do all the time, distributing this fresh seafood in communities up and down the coast,” said Environmental Police Maj. Patrick Moran, who is in his 33rd year on the force. “Mostly, it’s donations of fresh fin fish.”

But not always.

In late March, the Environmental Police donated dozens of lobsters to the Veterans Transition House in New Bedford, which serves homeless and at-risk veterans and their families in the southeastern region of the state.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Times