The Boston Seafood Show -
What can producers learn?

By Tony Ostrowski, Director, USMSFP

The Boston Seafood Show (BSS) is one of the most prestigious venues where seafood buyers and distributors can meet to promote and deal their products, exchange ideas, and get a feel for the international trends in seafood markets. It is also a good source of information for producers attempting to gauge the pulse of the industry and adjust their approaches to the demands and concerns of buyers. This can be accomplished by visiting the over 1,500 trade booths and engaging in discussions with buyers and sellers, but also by attending the Conference Program that focuses on current, key industry issues. This year was no exception. Presentations and panel discussions included traceability, the bio-terrorism act, and country of origin labeling (COOL)regulations.
Also timely was the annual Shrimp Forum meeting which focused on the shrimp anti-dumping suit. There is now growing tension in the buyer/distributor sector of the industry as COOL regulations, traceability, and impending tariffs are putting additional regulations and costs onto the shoulders of seafood retailers, buyers and distributors. The attitudes I felt emanating from the conference were important enough to convey to our domestic farming industry. We must be well informed to better prepare for the coming season and help provide insight for decisions being contemplated for the future.
Technical conferences are my normal venue, so I was a bit surprised at the relatively low audience turnout at most sessions in relation to the size of the BSS; most sessions only had 30 to 40 people. In contrast, attendance at the COOL session, including presentations by USDA, was so large (over 150), that it was moved to a bigger room. There was almost visceral condemnation of the regulations by the audience. The view from the retail community was that these regulations are unnecessary (voluntary labeling exists; consumers don’t care where their shrimp comes from; price is what is important), unprecedented from a liability standpoint (liability is on retailers, not like other products where the liability is on the producers), costly (estimates are $1.79 billion to the retail sector in the first year alone), and have a
disproportionate impact (the food service sector is not affected).
What was not discussed was the origin of the standards to prevent the introduction and spread of disease through shrimp imports, an effort promoted by the USMSFP for use on international animal health certificates. In fact, at one point an audience member stated to the USDA representative present, that if the US government wanted to engage in protectionism, they should simply impose a much simpler labeling method – US product versus foreign product. The labeling issues do appear complicated, even USDA admits, but what is of more concern to producers is that buyers will begin to require from suppliers such items as a sticker or label of country of origin (including US produced), written certification of that origin and likely third party audit (i.e., traceability), recordkeeping of production, even down to pond, for a verifiable audit trail, and indemnification, liability insurance in case of potential law suits. The bottom line is the threat that costs will be passed down the supply chain, winding up on producers’ laps. Referring to it as “onerous,” the National Fisheries Institute is actively engaged in attempting to repeal the law and, at least
delay its implementation.
The Shrimp Forum session focused solely on the anti-dumping suit, with panel discussion that included the presidents of the American Seafood Distributors Association (ASDA) and the Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA). The bottom line from these discussions is tariffs will be imposed, and efforts to differentiate shrimp to increase price will be the thrust in industry. Despite the tariffs, Eddie Gordon, President of the SSA, acknowledged the US shrimp fleet is in transition to a smaller size and shrimp imports into the US will not be affected. He predicted rising imports from other countries not identified in the suit. The talk at the meeting was the increase in shrimp production targeted by Indonesia. Most interesting was the heated exchanges alluded to by the unfortunate title of the session, “Shrimp Summit 2004 - Let the Battle Begin.” Eddie Gordon chastised the retail sector for gaining all the benefits of low prices while pitting producer against producer in a bidding war (even lamenting on the plight of farmers) when, “it’s the buyers, not the producers who set the price.” The heatedness ramped up when Wally Stevens of the ASDA countered in his presentation with a slide illustrating a bird of peace holding an olive branch followed by a slide of a boxing glove, symbolizing his interpretation of the SSA’s response to ASDA’s efforts to assist US shrimpers in marketing and other efforts to promote the wild catch. The exchange became uncomfortable when he directly accused Mexico of funding the suit filed by SSA to gain market advantage in the US He evoked the promotional campaign slogan, “The naked truth about shrimp,” introduced by the prior speaker, Antonio Diaz, President and CEO of Ocean Garden Products, commenting he would indeed like to know “the naked truth.” By the way, when asked by the moderator, Eddie Gordon did acknowledge that Mexico provided funds to the SSA, “after the suit was filed.”