Washington

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS– February 5, 2014 –Yesterday the House Natural Resources Committee held a Full Committee legislative hearing on draft legislation titled "Strengthening Fishing Communities and Increasing Flexibility in Fisheries Management Act."

This hearing examined draft legislation, released by House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (WA-04) in December of 2013, that would renew and amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to implement common sense reforms that will promote increased flexibility and transparency, improve data collection, create jobs, and give predictability and certainty to the coastal communities that depend on stable fishing activities.

"This draft addresses the requests of fishermen, fishing communities, fishery management Councils, and the recommendations of the National Academy of Sciences that the Act be modified to provide fishery managers with more flexibility. That's the key word: flexibility," said Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings

"The draft provides the Councils with more flexibility in how they rebuild fisheries, and it provides Councils with flexibility in how the Councils set the Annual Catch Limits. But it does not eliminate those requirements. This discussion draft maintains the requirement to stop overfishing, the requirement to rebuild overfished fisheries, and the requirement to set annual catch limits – but it provides more flexibility for better, local decisions to achieve these goals."

Witnesses at the hearing overwhelmingly supported the draft legislation to renew the Magnuson-Stevens Act and applauded measures in the draft legislation that would add increased flexibility to the law.

Jeff Deem of the Recreational Fishing Alliance noted that "Flexibility is a common theme throughout the discussion draft. The Recreational Fishing Alliance strongly supports the use of limited, common sense flexibility in rebuilding fish stocks and with ending overfishing."

Richard B Robins, Jr., Chairman, Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council, backed "the Committee's efforts to increase flexibility in the Act by addressing one of the most acute impediments to the successful management of some U.S. fisheries-the 10-year rebuilding requirement. Giving the councils flexibility to rebuild stocks as quickly as practicable, instead of on a 10-year rebuilding timeline, will allow councils to incorporate biological, ecological, social, and economic considerations more effectively into the development of rebuilding plans."

Rick E. Marks of Robertson, Monagle, and Eastaugh, PC, representing commercial fishermen, processing companies, fish houses, and fishing-dependent communities from Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, Florida, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island, supported the Committee's efforts to put more flexibility in the law stating that, "The title of the 'Draft' reflects the interest from around the country in restoring some measure of flexibility to the stock rebuilding requirements without undermining conservation. This theme resonates with many in the fishing industry. Regional Fishery Management Councils unanimously supported adding an element of stock rebuilding flexibility during the 2006 reauthorization and renewed those efforts in 2013-2014."

Vito Giacalone, Gloucester, Massachusetts fisherman and Policy Director of the Northeast Seafood Coalition, highlighted the Committee's efforts to renew this legislation especially when giving local fisheries managers more control over management decisions. "These provisions will provide the needed flexibility for the Councils to make common sense management decisions. They will enable the Councils to avoid the kind of prescriptive management responses that have achieved little if anything biologically in our fishery but which have been catastrophic to the economics of our fishery and communities."

Mark Fina Ph.D. J.D., Senior Policy Analyst at United States Seafoods, specifically underscored the provision in the Committee's draft legislation calling for increased flexibility in fisheries rebuilding. "The proposed modification of the timeline for rebuilding would remove the current 10 year rebuilding requirement, replacing that requirement with a more flexible timeline. The proposed modification seems to appropriately accommodate the influences of other factors (such as non-fishing environmental effects) on rebuilding the time."

David Krebs from the Gulf Seafood Institute echoed Mr. Fina's testimony on the importance of flexibility in fisheries rebuilding. "Timelines for rebuilding fisheries must be relaxed to enhance flexibility for fishery managers. The current MSA requirement for rebuilding overfished fisheries within ten years, with certain exceptions, is an arbitrary time frame and totally unrelated to the biological needs at hand."

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

Read the press release from the House Committee on Natural Resources 

 

January 31, 2014 — The USDA catfish inspection program, first authorized in 2008, is continued in the 2014 farm bill, which also includes a first-of-its-kind “crop insurance” program for catfish farmers.

Most of the so-called political experts were predicting it would go the other way. One paid prognosticator went so far as to suggest that “Southern catfish farmers” were going to be “hooked and filleted” by the new farm bill. But all those who said the USDA catfish inspection program was a goner were wrong.

USDA isn’t saying what happens next. The agency wants to wait for the Senate vote before commenting. President Obama has already said he will sign the farm bill, a product of a House-Senate Conference Committee that is already two years overdue.

Behind every major policy decision in Washington, D.C., there are winners and losers. For this round, the winners are the Catfish Farmers of America, based in tiny Indianola, MS, and the loser is the Virginia-based National Fisheries Institute.

Gavin Gibbons, spokesman for NFI, insisted in the seafood industry’s Undercurrent News that his organization of seafood importers did not lose in the farm bill, but that the USDA’s catfish inspection program repeal language was stripped out by Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS).

As the ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Cochran was among the handful of leaders who decided what was going to be in the final deal that both the House and Senate would vote on. Like USDA, those working on the farm-raised catfish side also are not talking on the record. It seems likely, however, that Cochran was going to make his play late and that it was going to be big – sort of like the way the Seattle Seahawks win football games. So the 2014 farm bill added crop insurance to the previously won USDA inspection program.

Read the full story at Food Saftey News

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS– February 4, 2014 — The preliminary markup bill for the reauthorization of Magnuson has been released prior to the House Committee on Natural Resources hearing today.

The major elements in the bill are as follows:

Flexibility in rebuilding

The bill makes a huge number of changes designed to provide councils and NOAA with more flexibility when it is necessary to rebuild a stock. 

Some of the language is as follows:

The rebuilding language is changed to allow a three year phase in in some species and to allow rebuilding to be adjusted if the

-“biology of the stock of fish, other environmental conditions, or management measures under an international agreement in which the United States participates dictate”

– “ if the secretary determines the cause of the stock being depleted is outside the jurisdiction of the council or the rebuilding program cannot be effective by only limiting fishing activities”

-"if  the Secretary determines that one or more components of a mixed-stock fishery is depleted but cannot be rebuilt within that time-frame without significant economic harm to the fishery or cannot be rebuilt without causing another compo-nent of the mixed-stock fishery to ap- proach a depleted status; ”

-"if the Secretary determines that the stock has been affected by unusual events that make rebuilding within the specified time period im probable without significant economic harm to fishing communities; ’’

It also gives the council’s power to end the application of a rebuilding plan within two years if the council finds the fishery is not depleted, or if a new stock assessment is made that confirms this and allows for rebuilding to be phased in over three years for stocks that have not experienced chronic overfishing.

Annual Catch Limits

The bill also modifies the annual catch limit requirements by adding flexibility:

-" In establishing annual catch limits a Council may consider changes in an ecosystem and the economic needs of the fishing communities."

Also short lived species are to be exempt from an ACL:

The bill says that fish with less than a 1 year life cycle, or a fishery in which more than half a single year class lives 18 months or less, or if fishing mortality will have little impact on the stock, there is no need for an annual catch limit.

Each of these exceptions may be overridden if the Secretary finds that the fishery is subject to overfishing.

Changes the definition of depleted stock

The term ‘depleted’ means, with respect to a stock of fish, that the stock is of a size that is below the natural range of fluctuation associated with the production of maximum sustainable yield."

The bill then goes through and substitutes the word depleted for overfished wherever it is found throughout the Act.

The bill also requires NOAA to state when fishing is not the cause of a stock’s depleted status, and identify those stocks that are classified as depleted for reasons other than from fishing, such as changes in habitat or temperature.

Limitation on East Coast Catch Share Programs

The bill also has a limitation on future East Coast catch share programs:

For New England, the Mid Atlnatic and the Gulf, no catch share program can be developed without a referendum where a majority of existing permit holders vote to establish such a system. Note this requires an absolute majority of permit holders, not simply a majority of those voting.  For fisheries with large numbers of small or latent permit holders, this makes catch share programs virtually impossible.

However, this will only apply to future catch share programs, not those whose implementation has begun prior to the effective date of this act.

Finally the bill also has a number of specific regional items applying to the regional councils and fisheries within their jurisdictions.

 

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

 

 

February 3, 2014 — With economic pain spreading — from a downsizing New England fishing fleet to the continued depression of the New Jersey recreational industry from superstorm Sandy — fishing industry advocates are pressing for changes to the federal fisheries law and environmental groups are fighting to keep reforms they won years ago.

Congress will be moving toward reauthorizing the 1996 Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, a reform measure that aimed to end decades of overfishing in American waters, and by many measures has succeeded. But it’s come at a stiff economic price in some regions, with fewer recreational fishermen paying to catch fewer fish and commercial crews fishing fewer days.

Amendments to the law proposed by Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, would give those economic factors a bigger role in government management and decision making, allowing easing the timelines for rebuilding depleted fish stocks.

Doing that “would waste years of effort … all in the name of short-term economics,” warned George Geiger, a Florida charter fishing captain and longtime member of the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, in a Friday telephone news conference organized by the Pew Environmental Trust.

Read the full story at the Asbury Park Press

January 30, 2014 — Applicants for Saltonstall-Kennedy grants could hear within the next week if their projects will receive any portion of the estimated $5 million to $11 million expected to be doled out by NOAA in this year’s disbursement.

Daniel Namur, NOAA’s Maryland-based program director for the Saltonstall-Kennedy grants, said yesterday that review panels have hit the home stretch of the merit review process for the 261 applications, including 123 from the Northeast region and a half-dozen from Gloucester.

“They’re wrapping up the merit review process as we speak,” Namur said. “The process has been complicated by the fact that there were so many applicants, but we could finalize everything within the next week.”

Namur declined to say what amount ultimately will be dispersed after the review process, which was delayed by more than a month by the partial shutdown of the federal government in October.

The program, designed to fund private and public-private research and development projects that benefit the U.S. fishing industry, is funded from money generated from tariffs paid on foreign seafood imported into the United States.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times 

 

January 28, 2014 — Today, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker determined a commercial fishery failure for the Fraser River sockeye salmon fishery in Washington State.

The fishery resource disaster was caused by the low return of sockeye salmon to the Fraser River which resulted in subsequent closure of the fishery for the 2013 fishing season. The closure resulted in significant revenue losses for tribal and non-tribal fishermen.

“The sockeye salmon fishery isn’t just economically significant for the state of Washington – it’s inextricably linked to its history and culture,” said Secretary Pritzker. “Because returns of sockeye salmon were so low and caused significant losses of revenues, the fishery qualified as a resource disaster under the nation’s fishing law.”

Read the full story from NOAA

WASHINGTON — January 28, 2014 — Fish sold on U.S. retail markets are routinely mislabeled, harming consumers while threatening the livelihoods of American fishermen, Democratic Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Republican Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said in a letter to President Barack Obama.

Calling government efforts to combat the problem “woefully inadequate,” they appealed to the president last week to order better coordination among federal agencies, including beefing up inspections of seafood imports, which dominate the market.

“The urgent need to fight seafood fraud and establish a standard of traceability can be met only through coordinated interagency action, and it is time for the agencies to come together to find solutions,” the senators said in their bipartisan request.

Fraudulent labeling can pass off less expensive seafood as more costly varieties, or even can launder an illegally caught fish into the legal supply chain.

In a recent nationwide study of seafood mislabeling, the nonprofit group Oceana reported that tests showed that a third of the samples of commonly swapped and regionally significant species were mislabeled. Rates of mislabeling for some popular species, such as red snapper and white tuna, ranged as high as 94 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

Read the full story at the Gloucester Daily Times

SEAFOOD.COM NEWS– January 28, 2014 — Despite years of bipartisan support to remove a proposed catfish inspection provision in the US Farm Bill, the USDA program will be included in the latest version of the legislation that is expected to be put up for a vote on January 29.  This is a big dissappointment for many in the seafood industry and congress who have been working hard to eliminate this unnecessary program.

The repeal provision was left out of the $1 trillion bill even though it received support from many in Congress who considered the USDA program to be a duplicative, costly program.

To date the program has spent nearly $30 million in taxpayer dollars but has not inspected a single catfish according to the National Fisheries Institute .

Moreover, the FDA is already tasked with inspecting all imported seafood items which has fueled conversation that the USDA program is duplicative and unnecessary.

"There is an overwhelming, bipartisan majority in the House and Senate that have expressed a need to repeal this wasteful program. The facts surrounding the program are indisputable and have not changed, neither has the need for its repeal," said the NFI's Communication Director Gavin Gibbons.

This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It has been reprinted with permission.

 

January 23, 2014 — Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., is calling on President Barack Obama to step up to the plate and coordinate fish inspections to combat mislabeling and consumer fraud, which hurts both fishermen and their customers.

"Seafood fraud is a serious problem in the United States, with surveys showing some common fish are mislabeled nearly all the time," according to a statement from Markey's office. More than 90 percent of the fish consumed in this country is imported and goes largely uninspected at the borders, the release said.

Read the full story at the New Bedford Standard-Times 

 

WASHINGTON — January 22, 2014 — The following was released by the offices of Sens. Edward Markey and Roger Wicker:

Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) today asked President Barack Obama to direct federal agencies to better coordinate their efforts to fight seafood fraud that threatens the livelihoods of American fishermen and harms consumers. Seafood fraud is a serious problem in the United States, with surveys showing that some common fish are mislabeled nearly all of the time. Although the United States imports more than 90 percent of seafood consumed domestically, foreign seafood is almost never inspected for fraud or legality, and the multiple agencies tasked with fighting fraud are not coordinating their efforts.

“The urgent need to fight seafood fraud and establish a standard of traceability can be met only through coordinated interagency action, and it is time for the agencies to come together to find solutions,” write the Senators to President Obama. “In order to help address the problem of seafood fraud, we ask that you promulgate an interagency rulemaking that improves agency coordination and communication, strengthens border inspections to detect mislabeled seafood, establishes a standard for national traceability of seafood products, and ensures that consumers have access to information about where their seafood comes from. These immediate, concrete actions will help reduce the incidence of fraud in the U.S. seafood supply and will restore consumer confidence that their seafood is safe, legally caught, and honestly labeled.”

The full letter can be found HERE.

Seafood fraud can be used to pass off less expensive seafood for more expensive seafood, or even to launder an illegally caught fish into the legal supply chain. A recent nationwide study of seafood mislabeling by the nonprofit group Oceana found that one-third of the samples of commonly swapped and regionally significant species they tested were mislabeled. Rates of mislabeling for certain popular species, such as red snapper and white tuna, were as high as 94 percent and 84 percent, respectively.

In the letter, the Senators note that the “government’s attempts to address this problem have been woefully inadequate.” The Senators cite a 2009 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study that highlighted the problems between the three agencies with primary jurisdiction to address seafood fraud, including gaps in communication, duplicative inspections, and more. The GAO found that these agencies – the Food and Drug Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Customs and Border Protection – could and should do more to address seafood fraud.  The GAO study says that the FDA inspects less than two percent of seafood imports at the U.S. border and virtually none of that is inspected specifically for fraud or legality. The report also found instances where FDA officials inspected a seafood facility not knowing that NOAA officials had already inspected the same facility.

In 2012, then-Rep. Markey introduced his SAFE Seafood Act to crack down on foreign fish fraudsters, increase inspection regimes, and provide agencies with the resources to enforce laws that would protect American fishermen from fraud. Senator Wicker is a cosponsor of the SAFE Seafood Act.

“Our constituents include seafood consumers, fishermen, and seafood businesses, and we all have an interest in protecting our oceans in order to ensure a sustainable seafood supply for generations to come,” conclude the Senators.