The US Department of Agriculture has completed a $12.8
million purchase of canned pink salmon harvested from Alaska waters for child nutrition
and other domestic food assistance programs. The purchases from four major
processors of Alaska seafood will help reduce large inventories of pink
salmon from last year’s record harvest.
USDA bought the canned humpies from Trident Seafoods Corp.,
Ocean Beauty Seafoods LLC, Icicle Seafoods Inc., and Peter Pan Seafoods Inc.
The purchases amounted to $4,733,863 for Ocean Beauty Seafoods, $4,314,673 for Icicle, $3,056,688 for Trident Seafoods and $712,160 for Peter Pan Seafoods.
The purchases amounted to $4,733,863 for Ocean Beauty Seafoods, $4,314,673 for Icicle, $3,056,688 for Trident Seafoods and $712,160 for Peter Pan Seafoods.
USDA said deliveries would be made from Oct. 16 through Jan.
31 to child nutrition and food assistance programs from Florida to Hawaii,
including northeastern, southern, midwestern and western communities. The distribution list is online at http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5109066
Alaska officials asked the federal government this summer to
make a second major purchase of canned pink salmon to help reduce inventories and
slow the price decline looming for Alaska’s commercial harvesters. The request in late July came in the midst of
another robust season for pink salmon.
Earlier in the year USDA purchased $20 million worth of
Alaska canned pink salmon, part of the bumper crop of unsold canned inventory
from the record-breaking 2013 harvest of 219 million humpies.
The previous record harvest of commercial pink salmon
harvests was 161 million fish in 2005.
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