Saving Seafood

Feds won’t challenge pro-lobster court decision

September 11, 2023 — Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice have chosen not to appeal the latest court ruling in a legal battle that has pitted North Atlantic right whales against the Maine lobster industry. As a result of the case—Maine Lobstermen’s Association v. National Marine Fisheries Service, et al.—and a regulatory pause put in place by Congress, the government must now wait until the end of 2028 to implement a new set of rules to protect right whales under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammals Protection Act.

The DOJ, which represented federal fisheries managers, had until August 30 to challenge a June 16 appellate court’s decision.

“It’s my understanding that the Department of Justice will not be appealing the June decision in the MLA case,” Maine Marine Resources Commissioner Patrick Keliher said in an email responding to an August 31 inquiry from this newspaper. “It’s good to know that we can now focus on the important work ahead, which includes developing and implementing a robust right whale monitoring program and alternative gear testing that can inform much more targeted and effective regulations during the next phase of rulemaking, scheduled for 2028.”

“The Maine Lobstermen’s Association’s uncontested victory at the Appeals Court puts an end to the federal government’s abuse of power and misapplication of the law in its regulation of the lobster fishery’s impact on right whales,” agreed Patrice McCarron, policy director for the MLA. “The MLA is encouraged that the federal government has accepted the court’s decision and can begin the important work of developing a new Whale Rule and Biological Opinion that are not based on worst-case scenarios and pessimistic assumptions.”

Neither the National Marine Fisheries Service nor the Conservation Law Foundation, which sided with the agency, responded to repeated requests for interviews prior to deadline.

Background

A year ago, on September 8, 2022, U.S. Chief District Judge James E. Boasberg issued a ruling that would have drastically restricted lobstering and related fisheries in order to reduce mortality risks to North Atlantic right whales. Citing figures from the NMFS’s “biological opinion” that put the right whale population at 350 or less, and estimates about the number of whales that were being entangled in U.S. based fishing gear, Boasberg essentially ordered the end of rope fishing in six months, in order to reduce the current minimal risk of entanglement by an additional 90 percent. The new goal set a standard that sought almost no risk of gear entanglement in the Gulf of Maine.

Read the full article at Penobscot Bay Press

Mowi: US DOJ has dropped price-fixing investigation

January 18, 2023 — The U.S. Department of Justice has dropped its investigation of Mowi’s involvement in alleged price-fixing in Norway’s farmed Atlantic salmon market, according to the Bergen, Norway-based company.

“Mowi has been informed by the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice in the U.S.A. that they have no longer an open investigation into Mowi,” the company said in a 18 January statement. “Mowi has all along been adamant that the price collusion allegations have clearly lacked merit and are entirely unsubstantiated.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Appeals court hears Chris Lischewski’s claim of judicial error

June 17, 2021 — Former Bumble Bee Foods President and CEO Chris Lischewski formally appealed his conviction for leading a tuna price-fixing conspiracy in front of a three-judge panel on Wednesday, 16 June.

Lischewski’s appeal is centered around an argument that District Court Judge Edward M. Chen, who oversaw the case, gave incorrect instructions to the jury. In Wednesday’s hearing, Lischewski’s lawyer, John D. Cline, called the jury instructions given by Chen erroneous and confusing, which could have made the difference in what he called a “very close case.”

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Department of Justice serves subpoenas to Pebble mine developer and former chief executive

February 8, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Justice has issued a grand jury subpoena to the developer of the controversial proposed Pebble mine and the company’s former chief executive as part of an investigation involving already-disclosed private conversations about the project, according to a statement from the project’s parent company.

The Pebble Limited Partnership and its former CEO, Tom Collier, have each been served with a subpoena issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Alaska, according to an online statement from Northern Dynasty Minerals, Pebble’s parent company on Friday.

The company and Collier must “produce documents in connection with a grand jury investigation apparently involving previously disclosed recordings of private conversations regarding the Pebble Project,” the statement said.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

FCF swoops in for Bumble Bee as it files for bankruptcy

November 22, 2019 — Taiwan-based Fong Chun Formosa (FCF) Fishery Company has entered into an asset purchase agreement with Bumble Bee Foods, which filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. state of Delaware.

The 25-page filing, made on 21 November, includes more detail about FCF’s stalking-horse bid for the company, which was first reported by Bloomberg to be around USD 925 million (EUR 836 million).

Read the full story at Seafood Source

As the guilty pleas pile up in tuna case, will consumers ever get anything back?

November 6, 2018 — First, Chicken of the Sea came forward as a whistleblower. Last year, Bumble Bee Foods pleaded guilty, followed by StarKist Co. in October.

The big three tuna companies — familiar names on the shelves of your nearest grocery store — have been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for keeping the price of canned and pouched tuna artificially high.

It’s a high-level antitrust case involving lots of big companies, but it’s also the kind of case that reaches all the way down to the grocery store checkout and family budgets.

Thomas Burt, an attorney with the law firm Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz, said with consumer cases like this, “Psychologically, these hit home in a way that others don’t.”

“If a group of companies fix the price of basic industrial chemicals or computer chips that we use in the devices around us, the psychological distance is further. We don’t feel it as directly,” Mr. Burt said. “This is a product that people have a relationship with. They know this brand. They’ve eaten it since they were kids.

“It’s a kick in the pants for consumers,” he said.

It remains to be seen if consumers will be directly compensated in some way, and, if so, how.

The packaged seafood market, which also includes salmon, shrimp, clams and the like, is a multibillion-dollar industry in the United States. Tuna represents about 73 percent of the market and generates about $1.7 billion in annual sales, according to court documents.

Read the full story at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

StarKist pleads guilty to role in canned tuna price-fixing

October 19, 2018 — StarKist pleaded guilty on Thursday, 18 October to fixing the prices of the canned tuna it sold in the United States between 2011 and 2013.

The Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based company pleaded guilty to one felony count of price-fixing, a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, according to documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.

StarKist faces a fine of up to USD 100 million (EUR 87.1 million), a probationary term of between one and five years, and must pay restitution as a result of its plea. The exact amount of StarKist’s fine will be determined at a sentencing hearing and the plea agreement is subject to court approval. As part of its plea, StarKist has agreed to cooperate in the investigation.

StarKist became the second company to plead guilty in the case, following Bumble Bee’s guilty plea in May 2017. Bumble Bee faced a fine of up to USD 272.4 million (EUR 234 million), but eventually the Department of Justice agreed to a lower fine of USD 25 million (EUR 22.8 million) to protect the company from potential insolvency.

Former Bumble Bee executives Walter Scott Cameron and Ken Worsham and StarKist executive Stephen Hodge also each pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy as part of the investigation, and former Bumble Bee CEO Christopher Lischewski was indicted in May 2017 on price-fixing charges but has pleaded not guilty. Lischewski’s case is ongoing.

In a press release, the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division said the guilty plea brings to a close investigation into the industry pricing practices, which it initiated in 2015. The investigation began after a failed bid by Thai Union, which owns U.S. canned tuna firm Chicken of the Sea, to buy Bumble Bee in 2015. In September 2017, Thai Union acknowledged Chicken of the Sea was the whistleblower in the case and received conditional leniency as a result.

The investigation was conducted by the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division – specifically by its San Francisco office – and by the FBI’s San Francisco field office. Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent in Charge John F. Bennett, who helped lead the investigation, and Makan Delrahim, the assistant attorney general leading the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, issued statements after StarKist’s plea was entered.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Trident settles with EPA on Clean Water Act violations

March 7, 2018 — Two federal agencies have reached a settlement with Trident Seafoods over Clean Water Act violations at Sand Point and Wrangell involving discharges of fish waste.

The agreement, announced on March 2, calls for Trident to remove nearly three and a half acres of waste from the seafloor near its Sand Point plant and limits on how much seafood waste is discharged from its Wrangell plant.

Trident also will pay a $297,000 civil penalty and do a comprehensive audit of the company’s system for monitoring environmental compliance, under the agreement reached with the Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Justice.

The Seattle-based processor has operated a fish meal plant at Sand Point since 1996 to help limit how much fish waste is discharged into marine waters.

Yet after decades of processing, the historic waste pile exceeds the one-acre limit, and continues to impair the health of the seafloor, EPA officials said. Unauthorized discharges of seafood processing waste lead to large seafood waste piles that contain bones, shells and other organic materials that accumulate on the seafloor. Those waste piles create anoxic, or oxygen-depleted conditions that result in unsuitable habitat for fish and other living organisms.

Read the full story at the Cordova Times

 

Feds seek dismissal of lawsuit over extended red snapper season

October 19, 2017 — WASHINGTON — U.S. officials accused of allowing red snapper to be overfished in the Gulf of Mexico have called on a federal judge to enter a summary judgement in their case, saying the environmental organizations suing them have a moot point.

The rule challenged by Ocean Conservancy and the Environmental Defense Fund to extend the recreational fishing season has already expired, said Jeffrey Wood, the acting assistant attorney general for the Environmental and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Wood also claims the federal court has no jurisdiction over the case.

“Even if the court were to find it has jurisdiction, the only appropriate course at this juncture is to remand to the agency for further action consistent with the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act,” Wood argued in a 13 October filing.

The two organizations filed suit against Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Marine Fisheries Service in July, a month after officials added 39 more days to the recreational fishing season.

Read the full story at Seafood Source