Monday, March 31, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Russia seeks complete end to strugeon caviar harvest
Russia has proposed all countries bordering the Caspian Sea impose a ban of at least five years on fishing for sturgeon, prized for its caviar eggs, Russian news agencies report.
"I will propose a moratorium on the fishing of sturgeon of at least five years to our Caspian Sea partners," the head of Russia's state fisheries agency, Andrei Krainy, was quoted as saying.
"We are ready to renounce sturgeon fishing, even for research purposes."
"The losses to our neighbours' budgets will not be large and we will gain much more" by imposing a ban, he said.
Ninety per cent of the world's sturgeon, one of the world's oldest species of fish, live in the Caspian Sea, and their eggs have been prized as an expensive delicacy for centuries.
But environmentalists warn that overfishing has depleted sturgeon stocks.
Research by the non-governmental organisation Caviar Emptor found a 90 per cent decline in the population of beluga sturgeon in the past two decades. – News.com, Australia
Business Toolbox: Sustainability
Researcher helps fishermen by reducing catch
Faced with cheap foreign imports and rising fuel costs, commercial shrimpers working in the Gulf of Mexico are facing some hard times.
The waters from Alabama to Louisiana account for nearly half of all U.S. shrimp production, and a University of Mississippi marine scientist hopes to enable shrimpers to be more productive, as well as environmentally friendly, by reducing bycatch.
“When targeting a certain species, there’s always other species that get caught in the nets, which is bycatch,” said Glenn Parsons, UM professor of biology. “Not only do fishers have to spend more time sorting their catch, they also end up with dead and dying species.”
Bycatch from shrimpers in the Gulf of Mexico is among the highest in the United States.
“For every pound of shrimp, there are about 5 pounds of bycatch,” Parsons said.
Reinforcing his enthusiasm, Parsons has worked over the past five years to develop a device that releases nontargeted species, such as juvenile red snapper, from shrimping trawls. Fifteen designs later, his bycatch reduction device, which Parsons calls a nested cylinder, has proven successful in reducing the amount of red snapper bycatch.
Parsons innovative device takes advantage of natural fish instincts. Made of two sleeves – a smaller cylinder nested inside a larger outer cylinder – the device is attached inside a trawl. The openings of the cylinder generate a continuous escape route around the circumference of the net, allowing nontargeted fish species to escape.
According to field results, the device is a success, with 40 percent to 60 percent reductions in bycatch. “This is good news for fishermen and conservationists,” Parsons said. – Press release
Business Toolbox: The environment
Fish farms hurting wild stocks
Scotland’s wild fish are increasingly being killed by lice leaking from salmon farms, new government research has revealed. But keeping them a safe distance apart has been deemed too costly and "logistically difficult" a solution.
Reports from the Scottish government's Fisheries Research Services (FRS) in Aberdeen and Pitlochry have found strong evidence that sea lice from caged salmon contaminate wild fish -- and the problem seems to be getting worse.
The lice eat fish flesh, causing badly infested salmon and sea trout to die. But the impact on wild fish has been hotly disputed.
FRS scientists will present the results of an eight-year research project into the impact of salmon farming on wild fish at a conference in Chile this week. Summaries of their studies, released under freedom of information laws, show links between lice from salmon farms and wild fish.
One study, by James Raffell from the FRS field station at Sheildaig in Wester infestations at with line in varied Ross, found levels of lice on wild sea trout nearby fish farms. A study of Loch Torridon and Loch Sheildaig concluded that a "widespread abundance" of lice in early 2007 was "probably linked" to elevated levels at local fish farms.
Another FRS report said research from Norway and Ireland suggested sea lice from fish farms could have "serious effects" on the wild salmon population.
The FRS reports were obtained by the Pure Salmon Campaign, which described them as "deeply disturbing".
"The government appears to have given up without a fight to protect wild Scottish salmon - a national icon - because it might be too difficult or too expensive," alleged the campaign's Don Staniford.
The FRS research reinforces a global study published last month in Canada which said wild salmon passing by fish farms suffered 50% higher mortality rates than salmon which didn't go near them.
"This should be a wake-up call to the global salmon-farming industry," said Staniford.
"The weight of scientific evidence now demands salmon farmers in Scotland, Ireland, Canada and Norway clean up their act before wild salmonids edge closer toward extinction." -- Sunday Herald, UK
Tuesday, April 1, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Celebrity chefs, Part 1
Brit chef chaffed over fish for French honcho
Chef Raymond Blanc has been slammed for serving rare wild Scottish salmon to French president Nicolas Sarkozy.
The celebrity chef created a wild salmon with cod, cucumber and horseradish sauce starter for a dinner at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium.
But the Salmon and Trout Association (S&TA) accuse him of ignoring conservation fears.
Patrick Fothringham, director of Net Loss, the S&TA anti-netting campaign, said: "It is astonishing that Mr Blanc, always forthright about his green credentials, is so brazen as to serve up wild salmon."
A spokeswoman for Raymond Blanc said they were unable to contact the chef. -- Glasgow Sunday Mail, UK
Business Toolbox: Celebrity chefs, Part 2
Michelin rigged? Say it ain’t so, Jean-Luc
THE Michelin restaurant guide, known as the Bible of gastronomy, has come under attack from some of the world's leading chefs and restaurateurs.
The 108-year-old "red book" is out of touch with modern cooking trends, a number of chefs claim in next month's edition of Waitrose Food Illustrated.
Marco Pierre White, who renounced the three Michelin stars he had won by the age of 33, leads the broadside. He claims Michelin fails to apply a uniform standard across the world.
"I've dined in Michelin-starred places in New York and I'm confused," he says.
"There are at least 50 restaurants in England as good as the two-star restaurants over there – rather than the paltry 10 that currently hold that number." Yves Camdeborde, restaurateur of the Parisian bistro Le Comptoir, says his restaurant has been unfairly ignored.
"What we represent is popular culture, not cuisine de snob," he says. "But despite our high standards and 12-month waiting list, we're of no interest to Michelin."
Toshiya Kadowaki, owner of the restaurant Azabu Kadowaki, who turned down the chance to appear in Michelin's inaugural Tokyo guide, says: "Imagine if I went to Paris and started pronouncing upon the food.
"The French either wouldn't take me very seriously or they wouldn't be very happy."
Michelin director Jean-Luc Naret tells the magazine: "Let the readers be the judges. Chefs are, broadly speaking, supportive of our judgments." – The Scotsman, UK
Business Toolbox: Conservation, Part 1
Herring on the brink
BREWSTER, Mass. — Last spring, Beth Finch counted just 30 hard-to-see herring as they spurted out of a background of rocks, leaves and eddies in the once-prolific Brewster herring run.
For 10 minutes at a time, over a 10-week period from April to early June, she kept track of the small fish struggling to get to Lower Mill Pond, one of the species' local freshwater spawning grounds.
Finch was one of 20 volunteer counters who tracked the number of herring that swam up Stony Brook through the marshes from Cape Cod Bay last year.
She will join the effort again this spring when volunteers for the Association to Preserve Cape Cod try to find out if more or fewer herring swim up Stony Brook.
The association is also branching out to count herring for the first time in Orleans as the fish swim from Little Pleasant Bay into Kescayoganset Pond and up to Pilgrim Lake to spawn.
Each spring, thousands of people flock to the nearly 40 runs all over Cape Cod, including the popular and scenic Brewster run on Stony Brook Road.
Now scientists are trying to find out what will help herring populations thrive.
The goal of the count is to help fisheries managers better understand why river herring are declining through the Northeast. Their plummeting numbers led in 2005 to a statewide three-year moratorium on the harvest, possession or sale of herring,
Cape Codders once coveted herring roe for dinner, carcasses for fertilizer, and live fish as bait for striped bass. The fish is also prime food for a variety of Cape wildlife.
Last year, an estimated 30,252 fish migrated through the Brewster herring run, said Jo Ann Muramoto, senior scientist at the Association to Preserve Cape Cod.
Through two video cameras placed under water near culverts under Route 6A, members of the association last year also caught images of thousands of juvenile herring on their way from the spawning pond through the brook to the bay, she said. Herring return each spring to their spawning grounds, so "showing that they are born and make it back to the ocean is the most important part of the restoration," she said. – Cape Cod Times
Business Toolbox: Conservation, Part 2
Herring in full abundance
SITKA, Alaska -- A herring fishery's crew in Sitka, Alaska, caught more than 10,000 tons of the fish in two separate hauls this week.
Thanks to more lenient fishing regulations and the current price of $550 per ton of herring, the Alaskan fishery enjoyed a very profitable day of operation, The Anchorage (Alaska) Daily News said.
Local fisherman Chip Treinen said the fishery's nets were so full of the fish they had to be pumped into the boat while still in the water.
"For those of us who were in the area ... we were like kids in a candy store," he told the Daily News.
Also aiding fishermen was the fact the herring were residing in shallow waters, meaning the fish were unable to swim deeper when the fishing nets hit the water.
Fishing regulations were eased this year after state biologists decided the spawning herring would reach record numbers. – UPI
Business Toolbox: Marketing
To tell the story, show customers how it’s done
BILOXI -- For more than half a century, tourists and locals alike have taken the legendary Biloxi Shrimp Tour, a 70 minute boat tour that ventures out into the Mississippi Sound.
It's considered just as educational as it is fun for the whole family.
For the first time in years, there's a new couple at the helm, Mike and Brandy Moore. The Biloxi natives share a love of the water and the Biloxi Shrimp Tour business. Very little has changed since the Moores took over the tour in February.
"What we do is what the Eleuteriuses did. We go out on the water. We drop the net over and explain the parts of the net, and after we explain the parts of the net you take a twenty minute drag and every drag's different. You never know what you're going to get," said Mike Moore.
The Moores share the same passion their predecessors did for the Shrimp Tour. And they hope the business will be a legacy they pass on to their own young children.
"We can be together for one. We can do it as a family business we have two smaller children we hope will be interested in it. We can spend time together, and this could be what we do in our old age and retirement."
But for the time being, they just hope to carry on the traditional tour that's a Biloxi trademark just as the Eleuteriuses did.
"We feel honored they asked us, and we want to keep this dream alive," Brandy said.
There is one minor change for the time being. The Shrimp Tour Boat is now docked at Point Cadet Marina. It will return to the Biloxi Small Craft harbor once repairs at the harbor are complete. That's expected to happen some time this summer. -- WLOX, Mississippi
Wednesday, April 2, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
Mercury, a Q&A
What is a safe amount of fish to eat per week for an adult female (past pregnancy age) and male in regard to mercury levels?
Heavier people -- both men and women -- can tolerate more mercury than thinner people, according to the World Health Organization. Some general guidelines by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration are that shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish have the highest levels of mercury, and that pregnant women and children should avoid them. Others should limit intake of those fish to once a week.
Fish low in mercury are shrimp, salmon, canned white tuna, pollock and catfish -- and a daily serving of these should be safe for most people, according to federal agencies.
The health pros and cons of eating fish were addressed in a Sept. 4, 2006 Los Angeles Times story. In it, nutrition scientist Cathy Levenson of Florida State University suggested that combining fish that have high levels of healthful omega-3 fatty acids and low levels of mercury is the safest bet.
Levenson's top 10 choices, based on those two factors: salmon, herring, sardine, shad, freshwater trout, North Atlantic mackerel, whitefish, Pacific mackerel, flounder and pollock. -- Susan Brink, writing in the LA Times
Business Toolbox: Honesty
Time to call in the sushi police
TOKYO – As Japanese sushi conquers restaurants and homes around the world, industry experts are fighting the side-effects of the raw fish boom: fake sushi bars, over-confident amateurs, poisoned consumers.
Once a rare and exotic treat, seaweed rolls and bites of raw tuna on vinegared rice are now familiar to most food fans. So familiar, in fact, that many hobby cooks in Europe and the United States like to make them in their own kitchens.
But chefs and sushi experts at an international restaurant summit in Tokyo warned of a lack of awareness in handling raw fish among amateurs and some restaurateurs who enter the profitable industry without sufficient training.
"Everybody thinks: 'sushi is so expensive -- I can buy cheap fish, fresh fish, I can make it at home.' It's not true. Not every fish is suitable to eat raw," chef and restaurateur Yoshi Tome told Reuters.
Tome's restaurant, "Sushi Ran" in Sausalito, California, was awarded a Michelin star and he often advises customers on preparing Japanese food.
He sees himself as an educator as well as a chef, and believes that more and better training opportunities are needed to prevent food scandals that could hurt the entire industry.
"I get these questions all the time -- people call me: 'Hey Yoshi, my husband went to fish a big salmon, we're looking to eat it as sashimi. We opened it and a bunch of worms came out. Can we eat it?"'
His answer: you cannot eat it as sashimi; but you can throw away the affected parts and cook and eat the rest.
In fact, Tome said salmon, which is prone to parasites, should never be eaten raw but be cooked, marinated, or frozen before being consumed.
He described another case in which an inexperienced restaurateur in the United States served raw baby crab. This lead to cases of food poisoning and prompted a recall of that type of crab. Tome serves the crab deep-fried at his restaurant and says it is perfectly safe if prepared the right way.
"Here in Japan, some people eat raw chicken, chicken sashimi. But we know chicken can have salmonella, so in the U.S. nobody eats raw chicken," he added.
Japan's bureaucrats drew criticism and ridicule a year ago with a plan to create a global "sushi police" that would assess Japanese restaurants overseas. Since then, there has been a change of tactics, and the emphasis is now on education and advice rather than uninvited checks.
Ryuji Ishii, who runs the Advanced Fresh Concepts Franchise Corp, the largest supplier of fresh sushi to supermarkets in the United States, finds that education is important not just for food safety purposes.
Ishii is rolling out his ready-to-eat sushi range in Wal-Mart supermarkets, having opened almost 90 sushi stalls since last September. They are planning some 400 stores in total.
But bringing raw fish and seaweed to middle America takes some work -- Ishii cautiously described the sales as "decent."
"The challenge is, we have never dealt with that market. So far, we've been dealing with a very upscale market, high-end supermarkets," he said in an interview on the sidelines of the two-day summit, organized by the Organization to Promote Japanese Restaurants Abroad.
"In order to become really mainstream, we have to overcome the Wal-Mart consumers," Ishii said. "We need more time to educate the consumers."
He tries to tempt shoppers with samples of the most popular type of sushi in the United States: the California Roll, made with avocado. Purists might argue that the California Roll, a U.S. invention, is not real sushi anyway, but Ishii says it allows customers to have a first taste of Japanese food and then get hooked on more exotic items -- the ones that include raw fish. – Rueters
Business Toolbox: Celebrity worship
Going to idiotic extremes
More than 3,000 people descended on Pebble Beach the past four days, and it wasn't for the golf. It wasn't for a sighting of Clint Eastwood, either.
No, they plunked down wads of cash, as much as $4,750 per person, to eat -- and to meet 133 of the world's top chefs and sommeliers, to watch Thomas Keller glaze vegetables, see Jacques Pepin slather caviar on a blini, and get up close and personal with the Mondavi family.
Haute cuisine has become a full-fledged addiction, says David Bernahl, who with partner Robert Weakley organized last week's first-ever Pebble Beach Food & Wine event, triple the size of its long-running predecessor, the Masters of Food and Wine at the nearby Highlands Inn.
The threat of a recession wasn't about to keep the new wave of gourmets, who like to drop cooks' names and obscure varietals as often as Tiger Woods sinks a 10-foot putt, from taking a class or seminar with one of their idols.
"People are more educated about food and wine than ever before," Bernahl said.
Epicurean obsession may have started with the Food Network, which he calls "a gateway drug," but now "people have surpassed Rachael Ray and Paula Dean. They've moved on to the hard stuff -- they're making foam at home or at least know how to order it in a restaurant. I have more friends who discuss their culinary experiences than what happened at the basketball game."
Joe Schoendorf, a Palo Alto venture capitalist who, with his wife, Nancy, and daughter, Katie, attended the Pebble Beach extravaganza, just might need an intervention.
He's eaten 50 times at Keller's Per Se in New York and French Laundry in Yountville, including buying out the French Laundry for his 60th birthday. Twice each year, he eats at El Bulli in Spain, regarded by some as the best restaurant in the world. He keeps a bicycle in France so he can ride from one Michelin three-star restaurant to the next.
When Schoendorf is not eating out, he and his wife cook. They're installing an outdoor pizza oven at their St. Helena home so they can bake their own rustic breads, and they have meat smokers and state-of-the-art grills at their other homes. – San Francisco Chronicle
Business Toolbox: Profitability
Restaurant outlook uncertain
The outlook for the restaurant industry remained uncertain in February, as the National Restaurant Association's comprehensive index of restaurant activity was unchanged. The Association's Restaurant Performance Index (RPI) -- a monthly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. restaurant industry -- stood at 98.8 in February, its fourth consecutive month below 100, signifying contraction in the index.
"Although restaurant operators reported positive sales for the first time in four months, they were less optimistic about growth in the months ahead," said Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of Research and Information Services for the Association. "Operators' outlook for sales growth and the economy deteriorated sharply, which led to a record-low reading in restaurant operators' outlook and expectations."
"For the first time in 29 months, recruiting and retaining employees was not the top challenge reported by restaurant operators," Riehle added. "Twenty-six percent of operators identified the economy as the number-one challenge facing their business, the highest proportion in the history of the Restaurant Performance Index. Food costs ranked second at 19 percent, while 'building and maintaining sales volume' and 'recruiting and retaining employees' were each identified as the top challenge by 15 percent of operators."
The Restaurant Performance Index is based on the responses to the National Restaurant Association's Restaurant Industry Tracking Survey, which is fielded monthly among restaurant operators nationwide on a variety of indicators including sales, traffic, labor and capital expenditures. – Restaurant Industry News
Business Toolbox: Consumer tips
That’s right – Japanese cuisine is easy
TOKYO – To cook the perfect Japanese omelet, you need home-made fish stock, a special frying pan, and a folding technique that is best practiced with a dozen eggs and plenty of time.
After cookbook author and consultant Elizabeth Andoh shows how to patiently manipulate wispy-thin layers of egg with a pair of chopsticks, it comes as a surprise to hear her describe Japanese cooking as quick and convenient.
But she is not alone.
Chefs and food writers are bringing healthy Japanese home-cooking into U.S. and European kitchens, focusing on soup, vegetables and grilled fish rather than sushi and sashimi. They also argue that learning a few simple cooking and chopping techniques from the Japanese and applying them to Western food can transform the way people live, think and eat.
"You don't have to be Japanese and you don't have to live in Japan in order to benefit from knowing Japanese food culture," Andoh, an American who first came to Japan in the 1960s, told Reuters after a cooking class in her kitchen in suburban Tokyo. "What is specifically Japanese is a notion of balance."
Every Japanese meal is supposed to feature five colors -- red, green, yellow, white and black -- as well as five different ways of cooking food and five different tastes -- salty, sour, sweet, bitter, spicy.
While this sounds as complex as producing the perfect omelet, Andoh says the idea can easily be applied to an ordinary Western lunch, such as soup and tuna sandwich. Sprinkle an aromatic green garnish over the soup, place a slice of tomato on the sandwich, and all of a sudden the meal will come together.
At a restaurant summit in Tokyo, New York chef David Bouley pointed out that many Japanese techniques can be adapted to other cuisines -- for example, cutting a duck in a certain way to drain off some of the fat, or killing a fish quickly right after catching it instead of letting it suffocate. – Reuters
Thursday, April 3, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Farming failure
Plague spreads among floating pens in Chile
PUERTO MONTT, Chile – Looking out over the low green mountains jutting through miles of placid waterways here in southern Chile, it is hard to imagine that anything could be amiss. But beneath the rows of neatly laid netting around the fish farms just off the shore, the salmon are dying.
A virus called infectious salmon anemia, or ISA, is killing millions of salmon destined for export to Japan, Europe and the United States. The spreading plague has sent shivers through Chile's third-largest industry, which has left local people embittered by laying off more than 1,000 workers.
It has also opened the companies to fresh charges from biologists and environmentalists who say that the breeding of salmon in crowded underwater pens is contaminating once-pristine waters and producing potentially unhealthy fish.
Some say the industry is raising its fish in ways that court disaster, and producers are coming under new pressure to change their methods to preserve southern Chile's cobalt blue waters for tourists and other marine life.
"All these problems are related to an underlying lack of sanitary controls," said Felipe Cabello, a microbiologist at New York Medical College in Valhalla that has studied Chile's fishing industry.
"Parasitic infections, viral infections, fungal infections are all disseminated when the fish are stressed and the centers are too close together."
Industry executives acknowledge some of the problems, but they reject the notion that their practices are unsafe for consumers. American officials also say the new virus is not harmful to humans.
But the latest outbreak comes on top of a rash of non-viral illnesses in recent years that the companies acknowledge have led them to use high levels of antibiotics. Researchers say the practice is widespread in the Chilean industry, which is a mix of international and Chilean producers. Some of those antibiotics, they said, are not allowed for use on animals in the United States.
Many of those salmon are ending up in American grocery stores anyway, where about 29 percent of Chilean exports are destined. While fish from China have come under special scrutiny in recent months, here in Chile regulators have yet to form a registry that even tracks the use of the drugs, researchers said.
The new virus is spreading, but it has primarily affected the fish of Marine Harvest, a Norwegian company that is the world's biggest producer of farm-raised salmon, which exports about 20 percent of the salmon that come from Chile.
Salmon produced in Chile by Marine Harvest end up in Costco and Safeway stores, among other major U.S. grocery retailers, said Torben Petersen, managing director of Marine Harvest here.
Arne Hjeltnes, the head spokesman in Oslo for Marine Harvest, said his company recognizes that antibiotic use is too high in Chile and that fish pens located too close together have contributed to the problems. He said Marine Harvest welcomes tougher environmental regulations.
"Some people have advocated that this industry is too good to be true," Hjeltnes said.
"But as long as everybody has been making lots of money and it has been going very well there has been no reason to take tough measures." He called the current crisis "eye-opening" to the different measures that are needed.
On a recent visit to a port south of Puerto Montt, a warehouse contained hundreds of bags, some as large as 1,250 kilograms, or 2,750 pounds, filled with salmon food and medication. The bags -- many of which were labeled "Marine Harvest" and "medicated food" for the fish -- contained antibiotics and pigment as well as hormones to make the fish grow faster, said Adolfo Flores, the port director.
Environmentalists say the salmon are being farmed for export at the expense of almost everything else around. The equivalent of some three to five kilograms of fresh fish are required to produce one kilogram of farmed salmon, according to estimates.
Salmon feces and food pellets are stripping the water of oxygen, killing off other marine life and spreading disease, biologists and environmentalists say. Escaped salmon are eating other fish species and have begun invading rivers and lakes as far away as neighboring Argentina, researchers say.
"It is simply not possible to produce fish on an industrial scale in a sustainable way," said Wolfram Heise, director of the marine conservation program at the Pumalin Project, a private conservation initiative in Chile. "You will never get it into ecological balance."
When companies began breeding non-native Atlantic salmon here some two decades ago, salmon farming was seen as a godsend for this sparsely populated area of sleepy fishing towns and campgrounds.
The industry has grown eight-fold since 1990. Today it employs some 53,000 people either directly or indirectly. Marine Harvest currently operates the world's largest "closed system" fish-farming facility at Rio Blanco, near Puerto Montt, where 35 million fish a year are raised until they weigh about 10 grams.
As the industry now abandons the region in search of uncontaminated waters elsewhere, local people are angry and worried about their future.
The salmon companies "are robbing us of our wealth," said Victor Gutierrez, a fisherman from a town on the Gulf of Reloncavi, which is dotted with salmon farms. "They bring illnesses and then leave us with the problems."
Since discovering the virus in Chile last July, Marine Harvest has closed 14 of its 60 centers and announced it would lay off 1,200 workers, or one-quarter of its Chilean operation. Since the company announced last month that it would move to a region farther south, the government has said the virus had spread there as well, in two separate outbreaks not involving Marine Harvest.
Industry officials say Chile is suffering similar growing pains to salmon farming operations in Norway, Scotland and the Faroe Islands, where the ISA virus, in a different form, struck previously.
Norway, the world's leading salmon producer, eventually decided to spread salmon farms farther apart, reducing the stresses on the fish, and responded to criticism of high antibiotic use with stronger regulations and the development of vaccines.
Researchers in Chile say salmon farming's problems go well beyond the latest virus. Their concerns mirror those of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, which heavily criticized Chile's farm-fishing industry in a 2005 report.
The OECD said the industry needed to limit the escape of about one million salmon a year; control the use of fungicides like green malachite, a carcinogen that was prohibited in 2002; and better regulate the colorant used to make salmon more rosy, which has been associated with retina problems in humans. It also noted that Chile's use of antibiotics was "excessive." Officials at Sernapesca, Chile's national fish agency, declined repeated interview requests for this article and did not respond to written questions submitted more than a week before publication.
But César Barros, president of SalmonChile, the industry association, said, "We are working with the government to improve the situation." He dismissed the broader criticism of sanitary conditions, saying there was no scientific evidence to support the claims. But researchers charge that the industry has been reluctant to fund scientific studies, which Chile sorely needs. – International Herald Tribune
Business Toolbox: One word: Plastics
Farmed cod? Better tasting through chemistry
Cod farmers are scaling back on their predictions to be the next big boom in aquaculture.
A few years ago industry watchers hailed cod as the next aquaculture gold rush and said world farmed production could approach 500 million pounds within a decade. But now cod farming appears to be floundering.
Seafood.com editor John Sackton reports that fish growers in Norway, the world's cod farming leader, now say they will produce less than 10,000 tons of cod this year, not enough for a viable market.
Farmers are saying attempts to grow the fish commercially have hit some big biological roadblocks. A major problem is that farmed cod reach sexual maturity much more quickly than wild fish -- sometimes within a year. That means when they reach market size 18 months later, the cod flesh has turned mushy, with no sales value. Selective breeding and other methods could solve the problem, but that takes money.
Sackton said even with record wild cod prices, costs for successful aquaculture are high, and the problems have discouraged investors.
Making farmed fish taste like a wild one is the latest investment of HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries, one of the world's biggest tilapia growers, has created "sea-flavored" tilapia.
HQ uses a secret mix of flavoring compounds and other high tech methods to "manipulate its farmed fish to taste like wild pollock."
The company wants to break the hold that Alaska pollock has in the fast food and fish stick markets by better imitating the taste of wild fish. The Seattle-based HQ Maritime Industries, which touts itself as the leader in "zero toxin aquaculture," operates in China, the world's largest tilapia producer.
The U.S. imports the most tilapia, and sales are growing at more than 30 percent a year. Worldwide, tilapia sales will likely top $4 billion by 2010. – RedOrbit
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
Finding riches in a different sort of crude
Alaska's future fortunes could soon be fueled by another oil boom -- and it won't be from crude.
Fish oils are the biggest buzz in the bio-products world, said Peter Bechtel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
"We're seeing almost a revolution right now. Everyone is interested in the health benefits from omega 3 fatty acids, and Alaska's cold water marine fish are an excellent source," he said.
Several things are driving the bio-rally, especially in today's climate of "planet consciousness."
"We have a huge amount of material in Alaska that isn't made into fillets or roe, and we need to do something with this. This is especially important to parts of the salmon industry in Southeast Alaska," Bechtel said.
According to 2005 federal data, Alaska fishermen catch approximately 2.5 million metric tons of fish each year, yielding 1.3 million tons of waste – heads, guts, etc.
A portion of that becomes fish meal or fertilizers. Bechtel said seafood companies are realizing there is lots more value in all that fish gurry.
"Almost anything that can be made out of these byproducts has increased in value tremendously in the last couple of years," Bechtel said.
The material can be made into fish oils, fish meals, supplements, gelatins from skins, and ingredients for farm animals, even ingredients for the cosmetic industry. Bechtel said fish oils can also cut energy needs in rural Alaska.
"In Alaska a lot of fish oil can be made. The question is how much is it worth. The current price is the same as boiler fuel. It can be used to heat hot water and other things," he said.
Bechtel said Alaska "is making tremendous strides in byproducts utilization -- one fish part at a time."
Federal dollars could help fuel fish oil projects for Alaska fishermen.
"Those would be value added products, because you're taking the fish and processing it into a new product. That absolutely would be eligible," said Dean Stewart, director of Business Programs for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development program in Palmer.
Adding value can be as basic as heading and gutting, or chilling the fish.
"The result is intended to allow agricultural producers to receive more benefit from the products they produce, instead of just selling it in the raw form," Stewart said.
More than $18 million is available for the program nationwide. Up to $100,000 is available for planning grants and up to $300,000 as working capital grants. Stewart said the money can be used for branding and marketing programs, and custom processing.
"Fishermen can contract for the processing. as long as they own the product and they get their own fish back. The cost of that processing is actually a working capital cost and can be a part of the reimbursement through the grant," he said.
The value added grants apply to all active fishermen.
"We keep hearing about pockets of fishermen and family processing activities, and we really think there are good opportunities for us to support these projects," Stewart said. --Seward Phoenix Log, Alaska
Business Toolbox: Your competition
Maine shrimp fishermen selling to consumers
On Saturday night, men in thick winter jackets hoist shrimp out of the icy waters of the Gulf of Maine. Most of the shrimp haul goes to a processor three hours away; some shrimp travel as far away as the Carolinas.
But early Sunday morning, co-op manager Kim Libby drives a few miles down the road to a snowy parking lot, where she delivers the catch directly to locals. These customers have paid for a portion of the catch in advance.
"Here's hoping that we can sell all of our product like this one day," she says.
By eliminating processors and purveyors, the Port Clyde Draggermen's Co-op hopes to increase the return on its shrimp, a staple for winter groundfishing boats in the state. The tiny crustaceans have been selling for less than 50 cents a pound. By going direct to consumers, the co-op is essentially trying to make more money selling less seafood -- and, in the process, they're hoping to reverse an industry in steep decline.
In addition to federal lawsuits and grants, smaller commercial fishermen are using direct marketing to stay afloat. At least four fishing groups started similar initiatives last year.
Two Maine brothers, John and Brendan Ready, sell subscriptions of lobster and other seafood under the name Catch a Piece of Maine. Their 150 subscribers receive shipments and can even go online to check on the status of their underwater investment.
In Alaska, the nonprofit Alaska Marine Conservation Council sends its donors tangible evidence of its environmental initiatives: sustainably harvested seafood. Marketing campaigns have also been launched to promote the regions' seafood, including North Carolina's Carteret Catch and New Orleans' White Boots Brigade.
These community-supported fisheries (CSFs) attempt to replicate the success of small farmers using the community-supported agriculture (CSA) model. Like CSAs, the idea is that shareholders will invest at the beginning of the season with guaranteed return of food dividends all season long.
"You're getting food from someone you know. You know how they grow it, you know how they treat it," says Anne Burt, an organizer with the Maine Council of Churches, which has been organizing CSAs with the Maine Organic Farming and Gardening Association.
The CSA model originated in Japan as teikei (literally "cooperation") and first came to the United States in 1986 in the midst of a long, steady decline in small family farms in America.
Now, an estimated 1,500 CSAs operate in the US, according to Nichole Nazelrod at the Robyn Van En Center at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa. Many of them are new farms. In fact, over roughly the same period the number of small farms appears to have grown, according to US Department of Agriculture databases.
Some organizers hope community support will reverse declines in family-owned commercial fishing vessels in oceans that are increasingly considered depleted. By some estimates, the world's fisheries are 80 percent depleted.
"Thirty years ago, we all thought, we'd never clean everything up," never catch all the fish in the ocean's seemingly infinite bounty. "But we've done a pretty good job," says Port Clyde fisherman Glen Libby. "Now, we're in the process of trying to save what we have left."– Christian Science Monitor
Friday, April 4, 2008P
Business Toolbox: Your competitors
Safeway cuts Chilean farm fish imports
Multiexport Foods SA, the world's sixth-largest salmon producer, fell the most in Santiago trading after U.S. supermarket chain Safeway Inc. said it had reduced fish purchases from Chile because of a virus in that country.
While Safeway has restricted purchases of salmon from its supplier Marine Harvest ASA, it is still buying from areas that have not been affected by the so-called ISA virus, said Brian Dowling, a spokesman for the supermarket chain.
``We're restricting our salmon purchases because of the quality issues caused by the ISA virus,'' said Dowling.
Cesar Barros, the president of the country's salmon producers, yesterday told reporters Safeway had stopped purchases of Chilean salmon. He denied allegations of excess use of antibiotics and said Chilean salmon complies with all U.S. safety standards. – Bloomberg Tribune
Business Toolbox: Your supply
Tough time on the Chesapeake
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The days are longer, the water's warming up and waterman Don Pierce is readying his crab rig in the yard, much as he has each spring since 1975, when he started plying the Chesapeake Bay for the estuary's trademark blue crabs.
But there's an edge to Pierce this spring as he repairs the cabin in the Bri-Steff, his 48-foot crab rig. Instead of looking forward to retirement, Pierce is considering a new job because of what is widely expected to be a lousy crab season on the Cheseapeake.
"I feel like crying in my beer," said Pierce, who planned to leave his Kent County home for the water Tuesday, the start of Maryland's commercial crab season.
The prognosis for the blue crab, the Chesapeake's hallmark seafood product, is bad. Last year's catch was Maryland's second-lowest since 1945, and winter population surveys indicate this year's harvest may not be much better. Fishery regulators in Maryland and Virginia say the crab population is nearing dangerous lows. Regulators are expected to reduce the harvest even further to save crabs.
"Where am I going to go to find a job at 59 years old?" Pierce said. He doesn't know yet what the restrictions will be this year, but he doubts they will be good. "This is going to be devastating to us. To everybody."
From Pierce's dock at the north end of the Chesapeake south to Virginia waters to the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean, watermen can't stop worrying about crabs. Neither can the picking houses that pack crab meat for sale, or the dwindling number of restaurants that still serve Chesapeake blue crab instead of relying on cheaper, more reliable meat from the Gulf of Mexico or Asia.
The worry extends to government scientists who manage the crab fisheries in the Chesapeake. Maryland and Virginia scientists say they've got one last shot to protect the crabs or they could face the collapse of one of the region's last viable fisheries.
Annual Maryland-Virginia surveys that project a census of the Chesapeake's crab population show crabs have been down — below 500 million estimated to be living in the Chesapeake — for 10 years straight. As recently as 1993, the estimated crab population was more than 852 million. This year's survey isn't complete yet, but scientists working on it say there's little reason to believe it will show the crabs have bounced back.
Lynn Fegley, a fisheries biologist for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, spelled out possible restrictions to a crowd of skeptical crabbers who packed a church basement in Annapolis last month. The options Fegley laid out were aimed at protecting adult female crabs — called "sooks." Few went over well. – Associated Press
Business Toolbox: Your customers' health
How to take omega-3s?
EDUCATION bosses still cannot say whether giving fish oil capsules to thousands of schoolchildren improved exam results last year.
In September 2006, Durham County Council revealed it was planning to give more than 3,000 teenage pupils free daily fish oil capsules to boost exam results.
Rather than conducting a scientific trial, with some children receiving fish oil and some receiving dummy capsules, the authority chose to give out free fish oil capsules to any pupil willing to take part.
More than 3,000 teenagers signed up to take the capsules, provided free by Equazen, the maker of food supplements, although only 832 took the capsules throughout the trial.
Eighteen months later, the council has been criticised for not revealing the results.
Ben Goldacre, who writes the Bad Science column for The Guardian, has criticised organisers of the Durham fish oil initiative for failing to publish the results of the study.
Mr Goldacre has been a critic of the Durham experiment from the outset, saying it was scientifically unsound.
Durham education officials have also come under pressure from Paul Thompson, a former County Durham headteacher, who has criticised the initiative from the beginning, describing it as a farce. Mr Thompson, who has questioned the ethics of the council working so closely with a private company, has repeatedly asked officers for more information about the initiative.
Last night, David Ford, the head of achievement services at Durham County Council, said he believed the council had been unfairly criticised.
He said that because of the scale of the study, it was taking a long time to analyse all the data. – Northern Echo, U.K.
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