September 13, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture is asking wild-catch U.S. shrimp producers to bid on 229,800 cases of shrimp under its Section 32 program.
Bids are due by 20 September, and the accepted bids will be announced by midnight on 28 September, the agency said in a notice.
Read the full story at Seafood Source
August 19, 2021 — Researchers at Rutgers University exploring the issue of what lab-grown meat products should be called to differentiate them from their traditional livestock counterparts have landed on the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured.”
The labeling issue has more at stake than just being accurate: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a “common or usual name” on their labels so consumers can make informed choices, but the fast-growing industry has yet to settle on a term on its own.
August 19, 2021 — While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has increased its seafood buying in response to the pandemic and directives from Congress, none of the agency’s COVID-related seafood purchases have been awarded to suppliers based in Maine.
Maine’s congressional delegation called out the agency on Tuesday in hopes of drawing attention to product harvested by the state’s small-scale independent fishermen.
“USDA efforts to engage these smaller producers will pay large dividends — supporting and maintaining economic activity in rural areas, and helping develop consumers’ tastes for seafood that is sustainable, affordable, and harvested close to their homes,” U.S. Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, and Susan Collins, R-Maine, and U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree, D-Maine 1st District, and Jared Golden, D-Maine 2nd District, wrote in a joint letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The letter urged the Biden administration to work with small-boat family fishing businesses to fully explore opportunities for Maine seafood products in USDA’s procurement efforts, according to a news release.
August 10, 2021 — Food companies, regulators, marketers, journalists and others should use the terms “cell-based” or “cell-cultured” when labeling and talking about seafood products made from the cells of fish or shellfish, according to a new Rutgers study in the Journal of Food Science.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture require food products to have a “common or usual name” on their labels, so consumers can make informed choices.
With more than 70 companies around the world developing cell-cultured protein products and more than $360 million invested in their development in 2020 alone, the adoption of one common name is crucial as products move closer to commercialization.
The study by William Hallman, a professor who chairs the Department of Human Ecology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University–New Brunswick, confirmed the results from his earlier study comparing seven potential names for these products.
July 30, 2021 — Washington, D.C., U.S.A was a busy place Thursday, 29 July, as lawmakers in both the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate passed large appropriation bills, both of which included seafood-related line-items and initiatives.
In the House, a package of seven spending bills passed by a 219-208 vote. The appropriations package included funding for such agencies as the Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and Department of Interior. Among the projects in the bill is a USD 6 million (EUR 5.1 million) initiative secured by Louisiana U.S. Reps. Garret Graves (R), Steve Scalise (R), and Troy Carter (D) that would redirect dredged sediment to coastal restoration projects in the state instead of having it dumped in the Gulf of Mexico.
July 30, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new massive bid request for 7.942 million pounds of frozen Alaska pollock will push the agency’s pollock purchases to near-record levels.
With the latest acquisition, the agency will have purchased nearly 18.3 million pounds of Alaskan pollock for the fiscal year 2021, Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers (GAPP) CEO Craig Morris told SeafoodSource.
July 29, 2021 — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is asking for bids on 320,000 pounds of breaded catfish strips.
Bids are due by 4 August for the catfish, which will be used in the National School Lunch Program and other Federal Food and Nutrition Assistance Programs. The USDA will announce winning suppliers by midnight on 11 August. The suppliers must make deliveries to several U.S. cities in January and February 2022.
July 16, 2021 — The Biden administration announced sweeping protections for Alaska’s Tongass National Forest on Thursday, including an end to large-scale old-growth logging and a proposal to bar road development on more than 9 million acres.
The 16.7 million-acre forest — which once boasted major pulp mills but is now targeted for its fine-grain, centuries-old trees that are coveted for pricey musical instruments, expansive outdoor decks and elegant shingles — has been a political flash point for two decades. While Democrats have sought to scale back logging in the forest over time, the administration’s moves go further than any previous president’s efforts.
July 6, 2021 — The Bering Sea TAC for pollock has been ratcheted back to 1.375 million metric tons — that’s down from last year’s 1.425 million and close to what it was set at in 2019. In the Aleutian Islands harvest area, the quota has been set at 19,000 metric tons, unchanged from last year. For the Gulf of Alaska waters, the TAC fell from the 115,930 metric tons to 113,227 metric tons for 2021.
In May, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the purchase of $159.4 million in domestic seafood and agricultural products. Of that, seafood will account for $70.9 million. Alaska pollock products have always been high on the list of purchases by the USDA for school lunch and other institutional food programs, and pollock contracts in 2021 will tally up to $20 million.
Also in May, data released by the National Fisheries Institute indicated that pollock pulled ahead of tilapia to rank fourth place in domestic seafood consumption. Though shrimp, salmon and canned tuna continue to rank above pollock, NFI noted that consumption of pollock products increased by a quarter pound per capita from 2018 to 2019. Meanwhile, the NFI research conducted for the Seattle-based Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers found that wild Alaska pollock products comprised 86 percent of that national increase from 2018 to 2019.
June 22, 2021 — Mississippi farmers are losing the catfish wars against their foreign competitors with the very weapon they saw as their salvation.
The domestic catfish industry along with representatives like the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi lobbied to move oversight of catfish processing from the Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture five years ago with the expectation the USDA’s stricter eye would limit the foreign imports that had decimated domestic production throughout the Mississippi Delta.
Instead, imports of siluriformes– the larger category of catfish and catfish-like fish sometimes referred to by their family name “pangasius”– have only increased since the switch to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service in 2016. Meanwhile, domestic prices and production, mainly in Mississippi and other Southern states, have continued to decline.
Almost 65,000 additional tons of catfish were imported in 2019 than in 2015 before the FSIS took over according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.
The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce lists recent processing volumes at 5 million pounds per month less than in 2015 during FDA oversight. As domestic prices have declined, the average value of imports has grown with the added USDA label.