Thousands of cans of Bristol Bay sockeye will make their way to school lunches and other federal food programs around the country this winter as part of a USDA bailout.
Icicle Seafoods and Peter Pan will fill warehouses around the country with half-pound cans of salmon as part of the USDA’s effort to address the glut of sockeye on the market.
Trident and Ocean Beauty also submitted bids to the United States Department of Agriculture, but didn’t offer the low price necessary to get the contracts.
This comes as good news for the sockeye market which had a surplus of fish after two summers of large harvests, says Gunnar Knapp, an economist with the University of Alaska Anchorage.
“If the USDA comes and says we’ll buy some of that salmon … why that takes some of that production out of the regular market, channels that it would go to, and it can make a very significant difference in helping processors to get a higher price,” Knapp said.
The USDA announced this summer that it would purchase up to $30 million worth of canned sockeye through its Emergency Food Assistance Program to address the glut of sockeye already on the market. Funding for the purchase came from import tariffs.
The salmon will be delivered to warehouses around the country over the next five months. It’ll be a while before Alaska knows how many cans are coming back to the state. Here’s Food Bank of Alaska Executive Director Michael Miller.
“When the USDA buys a commodity from any state, it is fair-shared out to all of the states based on level of need, level of poverty, and other commodities that they have in their system, so it’s very possible that we’ll see some, but it’s unlikely that we’ll see the majority of it,” Miller said.
