Top Story: American Seafoods Settles Flow scale violations with NOAA for a $1.75 million civil penalty
News Summary:
American Seafoods has settled with NOAA over charges that it misweighed catches on three of its vessels. American will pay a $1.75 million civil penalty, and the hearing into the violation with NOAA will be canceled. The allegations also pushed NOAA to issue revised rules for maintenance and monitoring of at sea flow scales, and the new rules will go into effect in 2015. This is a positive development for American Seafoods, as it puts any uncertainty about penalties to rest.
The potential sale of Bumble Bee is attracting a lot of potential bidders. Among the leading companies mentioned are Thai Union and Mitsubishi and Hormel. Some analysts think a company already in the tuna business is best positioned, due to the heavy capital investments required in plants and equipment. They also suggest that a protein producer has a relatively high value to a consumer products company.
About 30 million more pounds of crab will come on the market from Alaska this year, as quotas increased across all crab species. King crab, which starts tomorrow, is up 16%, snow crab is up 26%, and for the first time in many years, there will be 15 million pounds of tanner crab on the market.
Brazil is importing large volumes of fish fillets from China and elsewhere. VASEP has pointed out that pangasius shipments to Brazil this year are well ahead of shipments of Chinese pollock. There are huge issues with soaking product in Brazil, but on an unadulterated basis, pangasius may have a price advantage.
Finally, the new Darden Board will presumably follow the 274 page blueprint laid out by Starboard Value. However, restaurant analysts are cautious saying that some of the planned changes could undermine the long term future of Olive Garden.
Many longtime Darden employees and vendors consider the dismemberment of the company over the past 12 months as a tragedy. Darden, as the largest foodservice seafood buyer in the world, consistently took a long term view towards building up supply, managing relationships, and planning to have seafood to sell for generations. The new owners represent short term financial engineers who will be driven more by the results they can achieve in two years rather than the long term continuation of the company. At risk are all the leadership efforts Darden put in to promote seafood sustainability well before it had become fashionable among NGO’s. From convening meetings on lobsters in Honduras to acting as a founding member of the GAA, Darden’s legacy of leadership in seafood may become a casualty of Wall St. Ultimately that makes us all poorer.
John Sackton, Editor And Publisher , Lexington, Massachusetts
Seafood.com News 1-781-861-1441
Email comments to jsackton@seafood.com
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