Monday, March 10, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Your prices
A real crawfish boil: Farmers allege price-fixing
Complaints of price fixing has prompted a coalition of crawfish farmers to petition the Attorney General to investigate the practices of crawfish processors. Louisiana Crawfish Farmers Association director Steven Minvielle alleges that processors collectively drop their buying prices to farmers overnight. However processor and farmer Donald Benoit, who owns D&D Crawfish in Gueydan, and who sits on the Crawfish and Promotion Reasearch Board, says the prices are the work of an industry in transition governed by the free market.
Benoit lists a chain reaction based on demand at the retail end; the high price of fuel, lack of labor, competition from Chinese crawfish, an early season, and the mysteries of the crawfish’s life cycle.
Around Christmas, crawfish tails were selling as high as $17 a pound in stores. Yesterday, Champagne’s in the Oil Center was promoting a pound of fresh Louisiana crawfish tails for $8.99. Champagne’s mark up is 99 cents, their wholesale price from the middleman is $8.
According to Benoit, $8 a pound crawfish tails works out to 60 cents a pound live crawfish from the farmer, a price that Minvielle says is unsustainably below the cost of farming.
“They might have got too low at the stores,” says Benoit, “but it always justifies itself. If it gets too low, the crawfishermen can’t fish, then they got to come back up with the price, then everybody gets back to work. Usually it all takes its own course.”
As the weather warms, crawfish become more plentiful, and the demand is high during Lent, culminating on Good Friday. But because of the early season, Good Friday falls on March 21 this year, many crawfish are still too small to sell on the live market.
Small crawfish, in the 60 cent a pound range are “peelers,” and need to be processed to be sold as crawfish tails. Benoit says the labor to peel crawfish is scarce to nonexistent.
“There’s not enough processors to handle all the crawfish we got out there. There’s very few processors left in the business. Back in 1999, 2000, we had that Icon problem (a pesticide used on the rice crop that decimated crawfish, which share the same ponds). A lot of the processors went out of business and never came back. Some of it’s a labor problem, because they’re cutting back on Mexican labor and the processors can’t get their labor. That’s big time too.”
Hand graded large crawfish, about 8-10 crawfish to the pound, will fetch a price of anywhere from $1 to $1.75 currently, are beginning to appear in traps. But they’re just beginning to come in, and sometimes ponds simply won’t produce big crawfish.
“A lot of times,” says Benoit, “we’re in March, the crawfish won’t grow any more, you’ve got too much crawfish in the pond. Some of them ponds probably need to drain and wait for next year. We tried fishing out the smaller ones and letting the rest grow, but that doesn’t work.”
Another facet of the crawfish market is the uncertainty of the Atchafalaya Basin, which comes in later than the ponds. Depending on the amount of water from spring rains in the mid-west, wild crawfish production can boom or bust.
Adding to crawfishermens woes is the lack of federal insurance to help them out during a bad season. “Crawfish is the only commodity in Louisiana that has no insurance, no price support, there’s no engine set up by the federal government,” says Minville. “If sugar takes a bad hit, a faction of USDA will come in and make up the difference in price. So will rice, beans and everything else. In crawfish, we are a true free market, and we are getting persecuted by it.”
Benoit discounts both the notion of collectively scaling back to increase prices and the accusations of price fixing. “There’s no solution. I don’t think a strike’s going to be a solution. The only solution is if you can’t get enough money, you just have to leave that pond alone for a while. Most of us got to fish as long as we’re making money. The crawfish industry hadn’t changed. We’ve been in this for over 30 years. Crawfish starts coming in it gets peeled. The only thing hitting us is the high price of fuel and the labor problem. That’s the only thing changed. The people haven’t changed, they still are going to pay the same amount as they always have for crawfish. Bottom line is we’ll work as long as we’re making money.” -- The INDsider, Louisiana
Business Toolbox: Trash talk
Demise of cod farm brings no tears
I'D BE lying if I said that I was sorry to see Johnson Seafarms in Shetland going down the tube. More like "I told you so".
My first reaction, when I heard of the launch of its "No Catch" farmed cod three years ago, was sadness. Here we go again, another fine wild fish was to be debased, just like that sad travesty, the farmed salmon. This was followed by astonishment that any organic certifying body -- in this case, the Organic Food Federation -- was daft or greedy enough to lend its credentials to an operation which had all the hallmarks of being another flash-in-the-pan goldrush, like ostrich farming and biofuels, brought to you by speculators and venture capitalists who promise everything then don't deliver, not unlike Daniel Day-Lewis's scary oil man in There Will Be Blood.
Of course, I'm sorry for the creditors, who are owed £40 million, and the company's 14 workers who have been made redundant. But not more sorry for them than than the thousands of people who have seen their livelihoods that depended on wild fish and angling destroyed by fish farms.
Never, never buy into the idea that fish farming of carnivorous fish (that's fish that eat other fish) like cod or salmon is the green answer to our over-exploitation of wild species in the open seas. The global history of aquaculture is one long tale of environmental pollution and social and economic suffering.
So far, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation, a staggering 38% of the planet's precious mangroves -- the swampy forests that protect tropical coastlines from soil erosion, tsunamis and hurricanes -- have been destroyed to make way for tiger prawn farms, the sort that grow those tasteless, bouncy specimens that end up in our curries.
Mangrove destruction in turn precipitates salt pollution of land that local people depend on to grow food. When the inevitable disease build-up eventually stops production on these enterprises, the global corporations that owned them and fouled them just walk away, and start up more farms elsewhere.
The fact that No Catch cod has gone belly up should crystallise the debate about farmed versus wild fish. It should have established the principle that farmed fish at £20 a kilo is not the white night riding in on a charger to save depleted fish stocks. Fish farming is riven with structural problems.
Fish like salmon and cod are notoriously poor converters of food, and almost wholly dependent on wild fish stocks. Their wastes, which are concentrated under packed cages thick with sluggish, bored specimens, debase water quality and spread disease throughout an alarmingly wide marine ecosystem.
Unlike No Catch cod, which was a small outfit, the overwhelming majority of Scottish fish farms are not part of some quaint little cottage industry, but operated by Dutch or Norwegian-owned transnational corporations who have perfected the art of paying as few people as possible to perform the small number of fairly mechanical jobs they create. These companies think they owe us nothing, and are fickle enough to switch production to a lower cost country in the time it takes the euro to strengthen a point against the dollar.
AND yet the dominant thinking within the old Scotland Office, and now I fear, in the Scottish government, is that fish farming is an industry that deserves knee-jerk support. What a tragedy for Scotland that we should have been hoodwinked by such a bankrupt proposition and allowed ourselves to sell down the river the heritage we should have protected: inspirational wild fish and a clean marine environment. Our 30-year love affair with fish farming has proven to be the biggest ecological disaster to hit the west coast of Scotland in living memory.
Perhaps the worst thing about all the over-hyped claims made for fish farming is that it allows us to take our eye off the ball of wild fish stocks. It gives us an excuse to write off the seas and oceans as a source of future sustenance for the world's rising population. But if we can't manage our wild stocks for the common good then we might as well give up now and start looking for another planet to colonise. The penny must drop that, far from taking the pressure off wild stocks, aquaculture depletes them.
Greenpeace, which wisely has always seen fish farming as an environmental threat, not an opportunity, argues that depletion of wild fish stocks can be halted, even reversed, by creating marine reserves, a bit like wildlife parks, where no fishing is allowed and stocks can recover. There is persuasive evidence from New Zealand that stocks can bounce back in just a few years.
But marine reserves are a grown-up, low-tech solution that necessarily entails some short-term pain for fishermen and consumers, and offers nobody any immediate prospect of making money. In discussions of what to do about the looming crash in key fish stocks, we have always been in thrall to the guy with the quick fix, high-tech panacea, which just happens, incidentally, to guarantee a windfall for investors and miscellaneous stakeholders. More fool us. -- Joanna Blythman writing in The Sunday Herald, Scotland
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Bad news about West Coast salmon fishery
The grim reality of a collapsing salmon fishery will hit home over Tuesday as fishing interests, tribal representatives and conservation groups from three Western states hash out plans to protect the fish and, if possible, save their livelihoods.
The annual Pacific Fishery Management Council meetings began in Sacramento, but hovering like a dark cloud over the proceedings will be the dismal Central Valley fall run of Chinook salmon.
The 2007 fall run, the San Francisco Bay's biggest wild salmon run, was the second worst on record for spawning Chinook in the Sacramento River watershed. The plummeting fish population comes a year after similar problems in the Klamath and Trinity river runs and a dismal commercial and recreational salmon catch.
"Could it possibly be worse?" asked Chuck Tracy, a member of the management council. "Not much."
Scientists believe the current problem with the Chinook runs was caused by ocean conditions over the past few years. Prey for the salmon was lower than normal. – San Francisco Chroncle
Tuesday, March 11, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Undiscovered product
Pure rapture over British Columbia albacore
Albacore tuna from B.C. is just about the perfect fish. Cleaned and frozen at sea, it arrives in your kitchen virginally pale and reassuringly skinless and boneless. Let it thaw just enough so that you can slice it. Sear it, and that’s all you have to do, maybe adding a few Japanese-leaning condiments on the side.
Albacore is sustainable—the way it’s caught doesn’t damage other sea life or harm dolphins. Mercury isn’t a problem because B.C.’s tuna are innocent young’uns, so their flesh is relatively unsullied. What’s more, their omega-3 levels are far higher even than those of wild salmon, which makes this a fish that ticks all the right boxes, including that of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s Health Check program.
In times gone by, people didn’t know what to do with albacore tuna, but that’s changing. The first international B.C.–Canadian albacore tuna recipe contest—held by the Canadian Highly Migratory Species Foundation—pulled in over 250 ideas from around the world. – Georgia Straight, British Columbia
Business Toolbox: Lenten repasts
Salt cod can be foundation of fish cakes
With Lent here and Roman Catholics not eating meat on Fridays, we like to find interesting fish recipes.
The Culinary Institute of America (CIA) has shared a promising one that should tickle fans of salt cod, also called baccala or baccalhau, depending on if your ancestors come from Italy or Portugal, respectively.
Salt cod has been on Mediterranean menus since the 1200s, when the long-term preservation of fish, canning, and refrigeration were not yet invented, according to the CIA.
Salt cod cakes date back to Colonial times when cod fishing was a primary industry in New England. Fisherman dried and salted the cod soon after catching. It was simple to cure and, more importantly, it didn’t spoil on long journeys back to port and kept well for longer periods when fresh fish wasn’t readily available, the CIA explained.
Today, after years of over-fishing in the Grand Banks in Newfoundland there are depleted Atlantic cod stocks. Most of today’s commercial salt cod originates in the Alaskan Pacific region, said the CIA.
The preparation of salt cod cakes is simple, but does take lots of planning. The cod must be rinsed in multiple changes of water then soaked overnight in water to reconstitute. The reconstituted fish swells to nearly the size it was when fresh and is rinsed again thoroughly, then gently poached in milk. The result is a flavorful, firm fish that adds depth to these cod cakes, the CIA promises.
After assembling the cod cakes, they are pan-fried before finishing in the oven.
“One of the most important considerations when you are pan-frying is to have the oil at the right temperature,” said chef Phil Delaplane, assistant professor in culinary arts at CIA.
“Take a small amount of breading and put it into the oil. If it does nothing, the oil is not ready. If it starts to burn, it is too hot. The breading should begin to fry gently and turn golden brown,” he said. – Providence Journal, RI
Business Toolbox: The whaling controversy
Stop global warming: eat a whale
A Norwegian group has come up with a controversial new idea, save the planet by eating whales.
The attention grabbing idea comes from the High North Alliance, a group that lobbies for the interests of Arctic coastal communities and is a supporter of commercial whaling.
Norway and Japan are the two biggest whaling nations in the world, and have faced increasing international anger in recent years. The Alliance defended commercial whaling, citing the results of a recent study which found that whale meat is, in a way, a more environmentally friendly product than beef or pork.
Alliance spokesman Rune Froevik said: “”Basically it turns out that the best thing you can do for the planet is to eat whale meat compared to other types of meat.” According to the study funded by the alliance, “Greenhouse gas emissions caused by one meal of beef are the equivalent of eight meals of whale meat.”
The study itself focused on fuel use in the production of commercial meat. It found that 1.9 kilos of greenhouse gases were created to produce one kilo of whale meat. In contrast, a kilo of beef represented 15.8 kg of emissions while a kilo of pork represented 6.4 kg of emissions.
The study is thought to be the first to measure the carbon footprint of whaling. The study will likely be cited repeatedly in the near future as Japan and Norway look for new ways to justify commercial whaling. The study found that whaling had roughly the same carbon footprint as other forms of seafood. Much like parts of the seafood trade, however, whaling is condemned more for its effect on animal populations rather than its carbon footprint.
As you can imagine, environmental groups were quick to respond to the suggestion that eating whales is a new “green” activity. Greenpeace quickly condemned the study, saying most meat was environmentally unfriendly and the extinction of whales was more important than whaling’s low carbon footprint.
Greenpeace spokesperson Truls Gulowsen said: “The survival of a species is more important than lower greenhouse gas emissions from eating it. Almost every food is more climate friendly than meat. Most fish and seafood has similarly low emissions.” -- Environmental Graffiti, UK
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Business Toolbox: Your competition
M & S starts consumer web page
McCormick & Schmick's Seafood Restaurants has launched a Web site aimed at providing consumers with information related to seafood consumption.
SeafoodHealth.com features recent research and studies, news articles and government recommendations as well as seafood recipes and preparation tips.
With the launch of the Web site, McCormick & Schmick's also kicked off a campaign to encourage the public to "Eat Seafood Twice a Week." The "Twice a Week" campaign offers two healthy seafood recipes that can be prepared at home over the course of the next year, to make it easier for consumers to eat healthy by fitting seafood into their diets. – Dayton Business Journal
Business Toolbox: Gorton's recall
Mystery pills called herbals supplements
HARRISBURG, Pa.— Gorton's Inc. said that the pills a Pennsylvania family reported finding in their fish fillets were harmless over-the-counter herbal supplements.
The incident remains an isolated case and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is leading the investigation, Gorton's spokesman Jud Reis said.
The Gloucester, Mass.-based company recalled about 1,000 cases of its 6 Crispy Battered Fish Fillets in 11 states, and Reis said the voluntary recall has harmed the company's business. – USA Today
Business Toolbox: Legislation
Catfish farmers vexed by inspection bill
Catfish, a specialty of the South, is not what you'd call a giant of agricultural commerce. Yet thanks to the Catfish Farmers of America, the Senate has included a provision in a farm bill to help the catfish industry.
The measure, championed by senators from catfish-producing states such as Arkansas and Mississippi, would require catfish to undergo inspections similar to those for meat and poultry. Catfish advocates say the provision would protect consumers from tainted food while skeptics (and there are a few) say it would keep out imports, especially from Asia, that compete with the home-grown stuff.
The story, like the proverbial one that got away, gets bigger from here.
The House did not pass a similar measure, but it also did not want to be left out of the catfish fight. So House staffers, anticipating that other aquaculture lobbies would clamor for their own benefit, drafted a much broader provision that's now being floated to members of the agriculture committees.
Instead of applying the inspections to catfish alone, the draft would require the Agriculture Department to inspect virtually every kind of fish. "Some House staffers said, 'We'll be rewriting this constantly, so let's just make it for all fish,' " said Keith Williams, USDA spokesman.
The department opposes the broader measure, which would impose a massive new requirement; for 2006-2007, U.S. consumers spent $69.2 billion on seafood, about 80 percent of which was imported. Besides, Williams said, the Commerce Department already inspects some fish, so why duplicate?
But the real surprise is that neither the catfish folks nor consumer groups endorse the House-generated draft. "It's a horrible idea," said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America.
You would think that consumer organizations would want more inspections. But Tucker Foreman and Ami Gadhia of Consumers Union worry that the broader provision would introduce a less stringent standard for inspection at the USDA, which already is receiving heavy criticism for gaps in its meat inspections.
Besides, Tucker Foreman said, "USDA is not a good place to do public health."
The catfish people have a different concern: that the draft provision is so large it will sink the entire effort.
"This is threatening the heck out of my initiative," said Marty Fuller of Federal Solutions, the lobbyist for the Catfish Farmers of America. "We are concerned."
The farm bill is expected to pass sometime this spring -- even if the catfish item goes belly-up. – Washington Post
Business Toolbox: Product tracking
In Taiwan, fish pedigree is important
Tekho, a Taiwanese grower and supplier of grouper, is tagging its fish with RFID tags at its An Pin Live Fish Center in the city of Tainan, in northwestern Taiwan, to make each fish's life and health history available to consumers.
When restaurant patrons order grouper in Taiwan, they can expect to pay upwards of $100. The choice of which fish will be the best tasting and healthiest is up to the customers as they pick from a restaurant's tank of live specimens. For that reason, discerning diners look for grouper of a particular size and age, that has been fed specific foods to ensure it will provide a good meal. The fish's health is not always guaranteed, however, since the animals come from a variety of farmers at various locations with little recorded history.
Until now, customers have had to rely on a fish's appearance, as well as any manually recorded information about its origins, age, weight and health. But customers are often suspicious of the animal's health when there is little traceability as to its origins.
With Tekho's Ubiquitous Live Fish Traceability program, using RFID technology integrated by Microsoft's BizTalk RFID division, restaurants can now scan data linked to an RFID tag attached to a fish's gill and mouth to inform customers of its age, where it was farmed and what it was fed, as well as the quality of water in which it swam.
Tekho raises and sells about 27,000 fish annually for restaurant consumption, according to the company's CEO, Michael Wu. Its highly prized grouper are housed at the An Pin Live Fish Center, then sent live to high-end restaurants throughout the country. With a full traceability system, he explains, the fish have greater value to customers.
Wu says the company sought an RFID system that would provide customers with knowledge about the fish they were eating. In addition, he notes, RFID could save time and labor that would otherwise be used in manually recording details about the grouper as they are raised and then shipped.
The RFID solution takes the complexity out of tracking the fish, says Anush Kumar, senior product manager for Microsoft's BizTalk RFID division, which provides the software allowing RFID reads to be gathered, stored and shared with restaurants. To alleviate the cost of the system, Tekho is charging about 10 percent more to restaurants for the added data they have about a particular fish.
About one year ago, Microsoft BizTalk began building the RFID component of Tekho's Ubiquitous Live Fish Traceability system. According to Kumar, Tekho was already using BizTalk for business analytics, with workers manually inputting temperature data and other details about the water in which fish were located, as well as information about the type of food the fish were fed. All of this data was saved in Tekho's server, hosted by BizTalk. When a government certifier inspects a fish during its life at the farm, Kumar says, that information is also stored in the server.
Whenever a restaurant places an order, workers at the An Pin Live Fish Center remove grouper from a tank and attach passive 13.56 MHz tags to each fish's gills by means of a wire extending to the mouth, making the tagging more tamper-resistant. Supplied by the Asia Smart Tag Co., the tags comply with the ISO 15693 standard and are encased in plastic to make them waterproof and durable.
Employees scan the tag's unique ID number with a U-grid Technology handheld RFID interrogator, built into a PDA made by Macrotec Electronics. That number, as well as the time of the shipment and the fish's weight, is then linked to details already stored in the back-end system.
When a diner at a participating restaurant selects a fish, employees use the same model of handheld reader to capture that grouper's tag ID number and access its historical data, stored in the BizTalk server. The workers then provide a printout for the patron to study before deciding whether the fish is acceptable. If the customer approves the grouper, its RFID tag is removed and sent back to Tekho for reuse.
Wu says he expects to see a return on the company's investment, but has not yet done so. "I predict one more year for a full ROI, because of the initial investment and all the tags are returned back to us," he says, adding, "I've been very excited and happy about [the system]." -- RFID Journal
Thursday, March 13, 2008P
Business Toolbox: The future
Prices for food going up globally
Over the past nine months, global food prices have soared 40 percent, while food reserves are at 30-year lows. The rising cost of food is becoming a major source of global social instability and economic hardship.
In the US, rising prices have compounded problems created by the collapse of the housing market, rising energy costs and stagnating wages for the majority of the population. Retail prices on staple American foods rose by double-digit percentages in the last year, according to new data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The cost of milk rose 26 percent, and egg prices grew by 40 percent.
A report Sunday in the Boston Globe suggested that food inflation could pose a more serious threat to consumers in the US than soaring oil prices. This is because food accounts for 13 percent of spending for average households, compared to about 4 percent for gasoline.
“Rising food prices can be particularly corrosive to consumer confidence because people are so frequently exposed to the cost increases,” the paper commented.
“It’s the biggest risk we face economically, and it might be the thing that does us in,” Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research Corporation, told the Globe. “There’s nothing really worse than having a job, making money, and forking most of it over just so you can have the same amount of food. You’re running in place, and it really weighs on you,” he said. Rising food prices will have a broader economic impact, as consumers are forced to cut back their spending on other products.
Food costs rose by 5.8 percent last year, according to the BLS, and the US Department of Agriculture projects prices will increase by 4 percent this year. Another economic analyst told the Globe that the weakening dollar, coupled with record oil prices and rising demand for foodstuffs globally, would drive prices at higher rates over the next five years, by perhaps 7.5 percent annually.
When it comes to the seafood market, prices for farmed product will increase because of higher costs for feed.
Such predictions, of course, do not account for the possibility of major droughts, expansion of war into oil-producing countries, or other abrupt developments that would drastically exacerbate problems in the world food system.
However, federal data also suggest, even assuming no abrupt shifts, that US food inflation will continue and accelerate. The BLS reported that wholesale prices, which to a large degree drive retail costs, rose rapidly in the past month—wholesale egg prices rose 60 percent from a year ago, pasta rose 30 percent, and fresh produce increased 20 percent.
The increases have a direct impact on the diets of working and poor families. Already strained by high housing, energy and transportation costs, many households cut out more expensive foods such as cheese and fresh vegetables, or simply cut back on the amount of food they buy. – World Socialist
Business Toolbox: Your competition
Business, not government, setting standards
BRUSSELS -- Amid growing fears about food safety and impatience with government response, standards set by the private sector in Europe are starting to spread to other parts of the world, including the U.S.
In 1997, some of Europe's biggest food retailers responded to food scares like an outbreak of mad-cow disease by banding together to write new global guidelines for those wanting to sell meat, fruit and vegetables in Europe -- the world's biggest importer of food, buying some $20 billion last year from outside the EU.
Today, such privately enforced quality programs are becoming more popular in the U.S., too. In a key move, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said last month it would buy produce, meat and seafood only from suppliers accredited by private-inspection offices.
The biggest such private regulator, GlobalGap, now counts 81,000 farms and plants in 76 countries as members, up from 18,000 in 2004. The Cologne, Germany-based group expects to reach 100,000 this year, says director Kristian Möller. The group, whose annual budget is €2.8 million ($4.3 million), has only 11 employees.
The list of retailers who use GlobalGap is growing, too. In addition to Wal-Mart, McDonald's Corp. and Wegmans Food Markets Inc. are members. American farmers eager to sell to Europe's lucrative market are also getting in step with the old world.
"We are working towards getting all our growers GlobalGap certified, because of our commitment to food safety and the direction that food safety is taking world-wide," says Bob Carter, food-safety director for Columbia Marketing International, a Wenatchee, Wash.-based grower, packer and shipper for more than 200 fruit growers with global sales of about $250 million a year.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Department of Agriculture set food standards. Wal-Mart and other grocery stores have their own certification programs, but they haven't been as tough as in the EU. The U.S. and EU governments both carry out random inspections of food imports but budget and staff resources are limited. Europe's argument for developing a private label program, spanning several countries and companies was to "provide a rapid response to things the consumer cares about, in a way that governments can't provide," says Nick Ball, a technical manager at Tesco PLC, the British grocery giant.
In the EU, private retailers say they're frustrated by having to navigate 27 national governments and a continental bureaucracy in Brussels; it's easier to make the rules themselves. Certification requirements for GlobalGap, which stands for "Global Good Agricultural Practice," include limits on pesticide residue (how much is left on a fruit or vegetable after it's washed), a ban on nonessential animals around packing houses (including, to the annoyance of many farmers, dogs), and soil analyses to make sure farmers aren't using too much fertilizer. The standards increase shelf prices, contributing to global food inflation, but surveys and sales data show consumers will pay more for a promise of quality.
GlobalGap members can move fast to force their demands on farmers. Last year, a Greenpeace public-relations campaign in Germany led retailers there to quickly impose limits on pesticide residue that are stricter than those mandated by EU legislation.
GlobalGap isn't without controversy. It's easier for bigger farms to make the investments to meet certain requirements. That puts smaller producers at a disadvantage.
A coalition of developing countries, including Brazil and Egypt, has filed a complaint to that effect at the World Trade Organization in Geneva. They say private-sector standards are an unfair trade barrier for the world's poor. "
A standard you can't meet is like a 1,000% tariff," says WTO director Pascal Lamy. The organization is investigating, but it's not yet clear whether WTO has any legal authority over private standards, says Mr. Lamy. The EU and U.S. oppose any interference with private standards. Governments have no business interfering with private companies, U.S. trade officials say.
Surveys by the EU show food safety ranks alongside terrorism as a concern for European citizens. EU officials say they're worried the rules will end up serving retailers' marketing concerns more than the public interest. Belonging to a private-label program "in no way excuses or reduces the responsibility on a food business operator to comply with the rules in force," says EU spokeswoman Haravgi-Nina Papadoulaki.
GlobalGap rules are also forcing shipping companies to invest in tracking produce. Port International GmbH, one of the world's largest shippers of fruits and vegetables, now uses radio scanning and new software to track produce from field to container to ship to shelf. The cost "adds a few cents to each fruit," says Tobias Siesmayer, a manager for Port International. "But this is something that people clearly want." -- Wall Street Journal
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Prepare for no Oregon-California salmon
So few salmon are living in the ocean and rivers along the Pacific Coast that salmon fishing in California and Oregon will have to be shut down completely this year unless an emergency exception is granted, Pacific Fishery Management Council representatives said.
It would mark the first time ever that the federal agency canceled the coast's traditional salmon fishing season from April to mid-November.
Such a move would jeopardize the livelihoods of close to 1,000 commercial fishermen from Santa Barbara to Washington State and would significantly drive up the price of West Coast wild salmon.
A decision to shut down the fishery also would kill recreational salmon fishing for some 2.4 million anglers in California, an activity that the American Sportfishing Association has estimated is worth $4 billion.
The council is expected to make a recommendation in April to the National Marine Fisheries Service, which will make the final decision about what to do about the collapsing salmon fishery.
The council's salmon management plan, first adopted as part of the 1976 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act and amended several times since then, requires the council to close ocean fishing if the number of spawning salmon do not reach the conservation objectives set for the fishery. – San Francisco Chroncle
Business Toolbox: Publicity
Now that’s a big crab cake!
SALISBURY, Md. — It's official. No one else has made a bigger crab cake.
Guinness World Records this month officially certified a cake of Maryland blue crab as holding the record for the world's biggest.
The giant delicacy was cooked in a 3-foot pan in October 2006 during the Diamond State BBQ Championship in Dover, Del. It weighed 235 pounds.
The cake was developed with the help of food processor Handy International Inc. of Salisbury, Md. Handy regional sales manager Jim Cupp says it took nine hours to cook and was later divided into 600 crab sandwiches. – Associated Press
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Mediterranean fleet overwhelming tuna
GENEVA — The Mediterranean tuna fishing fleet is so large that its capacity is nearly twice the current quotas, and some 200 ships should be scrapped to conserve stocks, environmental group WWF said Wednesday.
"The failure of international fisheries management has allowed a monster to thrive in the Mediterranean," said Sergi Tudela, head of fisheries at WWF Mediterranean.
"Decision-makers must be bold if the bluefin is to be saved from a sorry fate," he warned.
The fishing fleet from the 11 Mediterranean coastal states -- Algeria, Croatia, France, Greece, Italy, Libya, Malta, Morocco, Spain, Tunisia and Turkey -- has a catch potential of nearly 55,000 tonnes a year, nearly double the internationally agreed quota of 28,500 tonnes, the WWF said.
The Turkish fleet is the most bloated, followed by Italy, Croatia and Libya.
The Mediterranean fleet as a whole needs to shed 229 vessels -- almost a third of the total 617-strong fleet -- to keep fishing capacity within the 2008 legal catch limits imposed by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), the WWF report said.
The European Union agreed last year to restrict the fishing of bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean in the hope of reviving dwindling stocks.
Under the 15-year plan the minimum size of fish allowed to be taken was raised from 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) to 30 to help them reproduce.
The package, which will hit France, Italy and Spain particularly hard as they are the EU's biggest tuna fishing nations, is part of a broader global effort to protect tuna which was agreed last January in Japan.
"The time to act is now -- while there are still bluefin tuna to save in the Mediterranean," urged Tudela. – APF
Friday, March 14, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Inflation
Consumers expect food prices to rise
We want your feedback!In a recent national survey by food service consultants Technomic, more than half of consumers polled said they have noticed higher menu prices at full-service restaurants.
Perhaps a more disconcerting finding for restaurant operators, however, is that consumers have exaggerated notions of how much prices have, in fact, increased at national chains.
The national poll asked consumers about their full-service restaurant menu price observations and expectations, as well as their forecasted change in restaurant spending. Among the findings:
• The majority of consumers expect menu prices will increase more than 10 percent during the next 3 to 6 months.
• Most consumers (65 percent) believe the highest menu price increases will be in large, national chains and among high check average concepts.
• Consumer perceptions of average check, by brand, are 10 to 15 percent higher than actual average check amounts, by brand. Consumers believe they are spending more than they actually are.
• Over half of consumers (59 percent) expect to reduce their full-service restaurant visit frequency as prices continue to rise. – Hotel News
Business Toolbox: Your supply
News about West Coast Chinook is grim
The grim prospect of a total shutdown of ocean salmon fishing in California and Oregon is forcing anglers, merchants and food servers who rely on the once-thriving fishery to reassess their lives and futures.
So few fall-run chinook came back to spawn in the Sacramento River and its tributaries last fall that the Pacific Fishery Management Council said it would have to ban all salmon fishing unless a request is made for an emergency exception.
By Wednesday, the news had cast a pall over fishermen and salmon lovers from San Francisco to Cape Falcon in northern Oregon. Fisheries managers canceled early-season ocean fishing for chinook off Oregon, where commercial trolling had been set to open Saturday and run through April up to the Oregon-California border.
Even representatives of the salmon industry, who have made it a practice to lobby for more fishing, are saying that the situation is so bad it would be irresponsible for fishermen to put their hooks in the water even if the commercial season in California opens as scheduled in May.
In a positive side, biologists believe the current crash in Chinook stocks is part of a cycle in which oceanographic conditions limit the amount of food the salmon eat. If biologists are correct, the cycle should return with higher food – and Chinook – productions. – San Francisco Chronicle
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
Lenten fish ‘fry’ sans the oil
Around the world Christians are fasting and reflecting as they observe Lent, the 40-day period that leads up to Easter. For many, Lent means forgoing meat on Fridays.
Churches historically have eased the pain by holding Lenten fish-fry dinners, complete with some combination of cole slaw, macaroni and cheese, potatoes, green beans, salad, rolls, lemonade and dessert. The dinners raise money for the sponsoring group -- often the Knights of Columbus -- and are a seasonal event anticipated by parishioners.
But although the fish dinner tradition is alive and well, the "fish fry" name is becoming a misnomer as more parishes offer healthier alternatives to crispy, breaded chunks of seafood.
The feasting begins early -- 4:30 p.m. -- at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Kansas City, Kan. "A lot of the older people don't like to get out after dark," says Al Stimach, an organizer of the weekly Lenten dinners.
Stimach and other members of the Green Club, a men's social group, supervise the catfish fillets, breaded shrimp and french fries bobbing and sputtering in the fryer.
In addition to the fried entrées, guests can choose boiled shrimp or baked cod. The Green Club seasons its frozen cod by brushing the fillets with olive oil (in the past butter was used), then sprinkling them with lemon pepper and unsalted cracker crumbs. The table groaning with donated desserts includes sugar-free fruit pie as well as chocolate cupcakes that contain no peanuts, milk or eggs.
The number of people choosing baked fish over fried has risen steadily over the years, Stimach says. And indeed, on this night the Green Club runs out of baked cod. To avoid another shortfall the next week, organizers plan to order three additional cases.
Other parishes report a similar trend.
At last year's dinners at St. Charles Borromeo in Gladstone, Mo., the Knights of Columbus served twice as much baked fish as fried, organizer Charles Englund says. –Detroit Free Press
Business Toolbox: Your customers? health
Another endorsement of Omega
People who rely on fish oils to protect their hearts may have to supplement their diets to reach the best levels, according to an expert.
Two meals of oily fish give up to 500 mg of the healthy DHA and EPA fatty acids -- and that is just enough to protect a healthy person, according to expert Dr James O’Keefe.
These acids are found most in cold water fish such as herring, mackerel, salmon or tuna.
The number of research studies into the omega-3 fatty acids now runs into thousands, according to editors of the Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
Dr O’Keefe, of the Mid America Heart Institute, Kansas City, said eating fish oils reduced the risk of heart attack by between 19 per cent and 45 per cent, according to recent large trials.
Three studies have involved more than 32,000 people.
Dr O’Keefe said it is also effective to combine fish oil with the cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins.
He says people with known heart disease should take one gram a day of fish oil whilst those at highest risk could take up to four grams.
Dr O’Keefe said: "Overall, these findings suggest that intake of omega-3 fatty acids, whether from dietary sources or fish oil supplements, should be increased, especially in those with or at risk for coronary artery disease." -- StaffNurse.com, UK
|
|
|
