Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has announced plans to buy up to $30 million in "surplus" Alaska canned sockeye salmon, Sen. Lisa Murkowski says.
Details in this press release from the senator's office.
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Alaska commercial fishing news and notes
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- Deckboss
- I'm a journalist covering Alaska's commercial fishing industry. My real name is Wesley Loy. Reach me at wloy61@gmail.com.
22 comments:
Yes, it will definitely help the processors, fishermen? Probably not.
True... Fishermen are just another rock in a gold mine...
Funny how the newspapers have been running stories about how the personal use dipnetters are so greedy and maybe they take more fish than they need and how every spring there are craiglists ads for freezer burned salmon and the dumpsters at the land fill are full of old salmon. What about commercial fishermen being to greedy? Are they catching more than can "feed the world"? Why does the government have to buy the surplus to help them? Where does the surplus go that the government buys? Does it sit in a warehouse somewhere to rot? The commercial fleet touts the sustainable of their fisheries is this really true? Do we need to keep pouring more and more hatchery fish into the already glut market? First with pinks and now with sockeye. Why don't we hear an op-ed or articles addressing this problem? Why do my hard earned tax dollars have to prop up this so called sustainable fishery?
No you don't need to put your hard earned dollars to help the fishery, or farmers and sport fishing groups and so on, the government helps each industry, FYI auto bail outs etc. the list goes on and on.
Obviously you're reading the wrong blogs that don't interest you, go enjoy your sport fishing blogs and stay outa here!!
It goes to food banks which serves billions of meals a year to Americas less fortunate, that's one place I don't mind my hard earned tax dollars going.
Every time the canners overpack, one or another of the states senators comes through by getting the Feds to but up some canned salmon. Notice it is aways canned salmon, never frozen pack. Corporate welfare really, for those processors who have not invested to diversify more heavily into frozen pack. And it will continue to happen and fish price will remain low until those processors start reinvesting in their plants.
I opened a can of Trident "fancy pack" canned sockeye a while ago.
It had skin and bones in it.
FANCY PACK always meant to me, NO skin or bones.
I wonder how many consumers were unhappy about this.
Thank you Trident for making the term FANCY PACK meaningless.
Fancy pack does not mean it is skinless and boneless. But that is a good example of how the old time processors continue to be satisfied to turn out an archaic and dying product. Putting in canning equipment that turns out skinless and boneless product takes investment. Tridents focus doesn't appear to be focused on Alaska investment anymore, but instead on building plants in Georgia. Lost their way.
for 859, are you kidding, Those sockeyes wee from Bristol Bay, On a big year where processors had to Can and flooded the Market, to the best of my Knowledge there is no dipnetters there. I would also be very surprised to hear a Chitina dipnetter complain this year with the copper way over escaped with1.5 million counted escapement before they stopped counting as opposed to a 700,000 maximum escapement, but then again, they are dipnetters and that's what they do is whine.
Also for your information, this is salmon that will get used. Canned salmon has a very long shelf life, over 5 years. Unlike as you say dipnet fish that is where they take as many as they can, and throw it away in the spring , if there dogs can not eat it. And as previous poster said it goes to feed poor people in food banks.
EAT WHAT YOU CATCH OR DO NOT CATCH IT!
Skin and bones keep the "true flavor" intact. If the can said skinless boneless then I think you have a gripe. If take skin and bones out the product loses alot of the wonderful flavoring.
Canned salmon is great for foodbanks and soup kitchen because it is a shelf stable protein. No problem with this. What is the government going to do with with a whole sale H&G product?
5:49......the big processors are the canners. They make the money contributions to the Alaska politicians and so they get the corporate welfare. Small processors are almost exclusively freezers. They get a kick in the ass. The government can handle, distribute, and process H&G just as well ad canned.
It would only be fair if they would buy it a discount that what the processors would bottom line sell it for. This only marginally helps the catcher in that it clears inventory but is certainly boon to the processor. I don't think that the taxpayer should subsidise the Tridents of the world. After all, they(Trident) already got a harbor and runway to nowhere on all us slob's dime.
Mark Ervice
Homer
Just for your information: the $30 million spent on canned salmon by USDA was NOT your taxpayer dollars but (import tariffs)
"Just for your information: the $30 million spent on canned salmon by USDA was NOT your taxpayer dollars but (import tariffs)"
That's all fine and dandy but it's still ex-treasury.
Import tariffs are just another form of tax, although not one collected from the American taxpayers. But, the use and intent, to prop up the very processors who are responsible for low fish price, is just wrong. Instead of encouraging these dinosaurs to invest in their plants to expand capacity and product form, it just prompts them to go back and do the same old thing year after year.
The whole processing industry with the exception of Silver Bay just looks to be in a decline. The only other company with anything on the ball, Trident, has lost its momentum in Alaska and seems more interested in spending capital to build outside of the state. Government subsidy is not the only thing wrong, but it doesn't help in the long run.
Shove it in a can with a bunch of salt.
What else are you going to do with a poor quality fish?
Roger that , after throwing fish or laying on a pile of fish in a net for pictures, stepping on them with no ice or bleeding, not much else you can do but put them in a can with salt. The old saying "they all firm up in the can"
ps. how did it work out sueing your buyers.
9:02 - Trident only interstested in spending capital outside of AK?
They just bought two canneries in kodiak, and spent $30 million rebuilding one of those. They're also buying up every trawler they're allowed at top dollar. Don't worry you'll be a sharecropper in no time.
Good point. They now also own about half of Kodiak Fishmeal as well. And, they have bought up most of the rental apartments in town. Maybe they are moving their corporate headquarters there. In any case, they seem to be building a presence big enough to control the fisheries there. But they are also spending large outside Alaska. Their Georgia plant is a huge investment.
I especially appreciate the fact that Alaska food aid canned salmon as well as herring are proving beneficial to the health of nutritionally at-risk and HIV infected populations in Africa, through ASMI's food aid partners. Except for an accident of birth, that could be me needing it.
What a maze it was to set this up.
Cheers to all involved!
A can of sockeye under every bridge in America. Now there's a great business model.
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