14 



Mr. Manton. Our next witness will be Mr. Jim Salmon, First 

 Vice President, National Fisheries Institute and Senior Vice Presi- 

 dent of Purchasing for Red Lobster. 



STATEMENT OF JIM SALMON 



Mr. Salmon. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Jim Salmon, 

 Senior Vice President of Purchasing for Red Lobster, a chain of 

 over 600 seafood restaurants, and my company is a part of General 

 Mills, Inc. Each year we provide over 120 million seafood meals to 

 the American public. Our total sales last year exceeded $1.7 billion. 

 It is obvious that a safe, wholesome supply of high quality seafood 

 is essential to the success and future of our business and our 60,000 

 employees. 



I am here also as the First Vice President of the National Fisher- 

 ies Institute, commonly known as NFL Red Lobster has been an 

 active member of NFI for many years and has helped lead the asso- 

 ciation in its drive to improve the Nation's seafood regulatory in- 

 spection system. We appreciate the interest of this Subcommittee 

 concerning seafood safety. You will find our interest mutual. The 

 Nation's fisheries are tremendously important resources. This Sub- 

 committee's responsibilities to oversee their management and har- 

 vest must include concern for fisheries population by consumers 

 and the benefits of the fisheries throughout all regions of the coun- 

 try, not just the coastal production areas. 



To illustrate this, Mr. Chairman, I would like to cite the most 

 recent economic analysis on value of the fisheries. Seafood products 

 are worth about $9 billion at the time of landing and importation. 

 By the time value is added through processing, distribution of serv- 

 ice, these products are worth more than $35 billion to consumers. 

 This added value provides for hundreds of thousands of jobs, fuels 

 the economy, and represents the huge contribution of seafood to 

 the Nation's nutritional needs and quality of life. This topic is 

 indeed important and we urge the Subcommittee's continued inter- 

 est. 



As we heard earlier, it appears that we are on the verge of a 

 whole new chapter in the evolution of the Nation's food protection 

 system. The plans by the Food and Drug Administration to publish 

 a new regulation proposal requiring seafood processors to institute 

 a system of preventative controls in their operations is a watershed 

 event. We anticipate this program will serve as a model for a simi- 

 lar action in the entire food industry in the future. 



Hazard analysis and critical control point principles, commonly 

 called HACCP, are not new to Red Lobster. We actually began in- 

 corporating this concept in our internal inspection system in 1979. 

 My written statement details the extensive quality assurance pro- 

 gram employed by Red Lobster. We regularly visit every processing 

 plant supplying us no matter where it is located in the world. Our 

 specifications include organoleptic and microbiological standards. 

 We have four regional seafood inspection laboratories and a nation- 

 al microbiological laboratory. We currently utilize the services of 

 the U.S. Department of Commerce to provide a check on our in- 

 spectors to ensure uniformity to our specifications. 



