Cannery closure stinks
Published 4:48 pm Wednesday, April 14, 2010
In sad seafood industry news, the last sardine cannery in the U.S., located in Prospect Harbor, Maine, closes this week.
After 100 years in business, the Stinson Seafood plant (Bumble Bee Foods bought the facility in 2004 but kept the family name) will shut down, ending a 135-year-old industry that was a staple of the Maine economy, at the other end of the spectrum from the celebrated lobster.
Bumble Bee offered contradictory reasons for the closing: This year’s Northeast herring (sardines) quota was reduced from 180,000 metric tons to 91,000 tons. This created shortages, Bumble Bee said, that required trucking in fish from its cannery in New Brunswick and suppliers in New Jersey.
The closure was also blamed on decreased consumer demand, the Associated Press reported, as well increased competition from countries with lower labor costs — primarily from China and Thailand.
Wouldn’t decreased consumer demand offset a smaller fish quota?
Regardless, the real problem is sardines from China. It was just a couple of years ago that states banned Chinese catfish because it was full of an antibiotic banned by the FDA. Plus, it turned out, cheap catfish from China was putting catfish farmers in the South out of business.
No one bothered to check with consumers, who don’t want to eat fish from China.
Sardines were once considered a delicacy, then a budget lunch, and then beneath (American) contempt. That’s how these food cycles go. Which is why Bumble Bee’s action seems like bad timing. Sardines were so far out of favor they are now back in.
In December, nothing less than the economic superpower known as Oprah, able to spark record sales with a single recommendation, declared sardines a “super food,” full of omega-3 fatty acids and calcium, but with less mercury than many fish.
A California group is trying to get Americans to eat more sardines, AP reported, by pushing fresh sardines at white-tablecloth restaurants, while turning their noses up at canned sardines. That’s one way to go.
In Barcelona, however, a trendy foodie city, small tapas restaurants are serving top quality sardines, anchovies and tuna-stuffed peppers right out of cans, Nation’s Restaurant News reported.
Many U.S. chefs are enthusiastic about canned seafood because of its quality and promotion of sustainable seafood stocks, NRN reported.
Bumble Bee, which invested more than $11 million in the plant, says talks are in the works to sell the plant to another company to process lobster or other seafoods. Well, fish or cut bait. There’s a newly unemployed, trained workforce at the ready, and a worldwide market for quality canned seafood.
