Fishing leaders are right in expressing their outrage over hundreds of millions of dollars being steered away from marketing the U.S. seafood industry, as directed by the 1954 Saltonstall-Kennedy Act, and largely plugged into the operations, research and facilities kitties of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Yes, the past mishandling of these millions — raised each year through the tariffs paid by foreign exporters who continue to flood the U.S. seafood market — indeed demands a federal accounting probe, as Jones suggests.
But it should also trigger an immediate NOAA budget freeze — not only on the allocation of any new NOAA funds budgeted for future and bogus catch share programs, as a budget amendment that passed the U.S. House last month would require, but also for the agency's full fiscal 2012 spending plan, with money from the tariffs pulled out and re-directed to fisheries support and marketing as required.
How far afield has the industry's money gone? Consider that, in fiscal 2010, the Department of Commerce should have been mandated under the Saltonstall-Kennedy Act and its amendments to spend $68 million on "fishing industry projects" from some $113.4 million in tariffs paid to U.S. Customs Service on imported seafood.
Read the complete editorial by The Gloucester Times.