White shrimp return to Gulf as Sept. landings help mitigate losses from season's late start  Gulf shrimp producers say the return of a white shrimp season was responsible for an 18 percent surge in shrimp landings in September. The sharp increase helped offset earlier losses to the harvest created from fishing delays in May. Landings out of Louisiana were especially strong up over 45 percent for the month. Still, the overall harvest is down 9 percent for the season. Gulf landings have peaked in October the past few years so it’s not yet clear if the harvest will be able match last season’s totals before the fishery enters its seasonal downturn, which usually starts in November. Quirch Foods plans to focus on the center of the plate protein industry in a goal to hit $1 billion in sales for 2015. The Miami-based food distributor said it will also look at expansion opportunities to boost sales, which it has managed to grow at a double-digit pace over the past five years. “The Quirch family invests a share of profits each year to expand the business, and this allows us to take risks,” said Frank Grande, president of the family-owned business. In other news consumer prices for premium seafood items in China remain high despite the country’s crackdown on luxury spending by government officials. It appears that generally higher international market demand and an effort to curb smuggling domestically is keeping prices for spiny lobster, crab and geoduck high for Chinese consumers. Finally, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Mike Lee, ranking members of the Senate’s Antitrust Subcommittee, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission urging the department to “carefully review and closely scrutinize” the $3.5 billion proposed merger between Sysco and US Foods. Just last week Sysco said it would divest some of its assets to appease FTC concerns that the merger between the country’s top two broadline foodservice distributors was anti-competitive.