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 The Seafood Industry Is Being Regulated to Extinction 



By Bill Morgan, W.F. Morgan & Sons, 

 President, Shellfish Institute of North America 



In an in-depth review of the current state of the U.S. domestic fishing in- 

 dustry, one must conclude that there seems to have been an orchestrated effort 

 among all of the federal agencies to regulate this small, but traditional and im- 

 portant industry to extinction. If that was not the original intention, it is most 

 surely now the end result. To aid in this process, the media and consumer 

 groups have continuously propagated misleading or false information regarding 

 the safety of domestic seafood to the American public. 



It is difficult to understand this type of attack when you consider that of the 

 1,460 pounds of food consumed per person each year, only 15.5 pounds are fish 

 products. A few examples of the critical issues destroying the domestic fishing 

 industry mclude dolphin-free tuna restrictions, turtle excluder devices for 

 shrimpers, groundfish restrictions on New England fishermen, shark harvest 

 restrictions, closing of large crab and oyster processing plants on the policy of 

 "0 tolerance" for Listeria, an organism which can be commonly and widely 

 found in the environment, and the extrapolation of \ poultry epidemiological 

 study in Seattle, WA to assess a 1 in 1,000 risk of illness from the consumption 

 of raw molluscan shellfish throughout the country. Laws in Maryland and Vir- 

 ginia make it a criminal and civil offense to catch striped bass in the Chesa- 

 peake Bay. This has resulted in tremendous overpopulation of the species, 

 which feed upon shad, herring, menhaden, trout, and other commercially impor- 

 tant species. On the west coast, efforts to protect the sea lion have resulted in 

 endangering commercially important fisheries including abalone and saknon. 



I am afraid that NFI may have myopically regarded each of these attacks on 

 the domestic fishery as an isolated problem for individual species. It is in fact 

 pervading the entire industry, and the end result will surely be the elimination 

 of the domestic fishing industry. The only survivor may be the foreign import in- 

 dustry which already represents 68% of the U.S. consumption. Our domestic 

 trade industry wall have no one to pay dues, our regulatory agencies will have 

 no one to regulate, and unemployed fishermen, processors, packers and 

 transporters will be on Welfare. This outlook seems bleak and pessimistic, but 

 a recent telephone poll and personal visits indicate that it is unfortunately 

 shared by memberr- of the domestic fishing industry throughout the country. 

 One optimistic voice on the west coast was from an importer of foreign seafood. 



None of this is rational when you consider that the U.S. food supply is the 

 safest in the world. The National Academy of Sciences "Seafood Safety Report" 

 clearly stated up front that "most seafoods available *o the U.S. public are 

 wholesome and unlikely to cause illness in the consumer." They hjrther con- 

 cluded that those few problems that may exist wer.- not at the processing level, 

 but due to sewage pollution of the marine environment. The tremendous 

 health benefits of seafoods have recently been ma-le known to the public. Fol- 

 lowing the publicity of these benefits, the domestic seafood industry suddenly 

 faced the deluge of regulatory and media attacks. The data however, clearly 

 shows that reported illnesses associated with seafoods are very few compared 

 with total food-borne illnesses, and there is little to no credible scientific data 

 to support the conservation and management regulations. 



Bob Brophy, NFI's Chairman of the Board, asks "Will we be allowed to har- 

 vest marine resources for the purpose of feeding people? We are consciously 

 making a choice of feeding animaJs rather than people. Our ability to harvest is 

 increasingly restricted by recreation and sports interest." 



I recommend that industry representatives encourage NFI to create a "war 

 chest" for possible litigation against agencies or groups when warranted. I fur- 

 ther recommend communication with senators and congressman asking that 

 they challenge actual scientific data generated by FDA, CDC, NMFS or other 

 agencies involved in over-regulation of our industry based on questionable data. 



