| From: Snowshoe | 10/21/2019 2:39:35 PM | | | | | | The Oyster Poachers of Connemara
getpocket.com
In Ireland, few things are black and white, especially the law—and the tales of men who break it to dive for treasure under cover of darkness.
Like many stories of Ireland, this one begins in a bar. It was after closing time one quiet night during the mid 1960s in Connemara, and in the corner of the pub, a group of lads talked in low voices while nursing their pints. The publican went about his business, wiping up the bar top and rearranging stools. Soon, the men had empty glasses, but made no moves towards leaving. They were waiting for something. When the headlights of a pick-up truck shone through the window, they scattered out into the night. This is the first oyster poaching memory V (as he wishes to be referred to in this article) can recall. The men in the bar were waiting for a buyer who agreed to meet under the cover of darkness. The product was oysters, dredged from a neglected bed about two miles offshore. A typical poaching expedition took place under the glow of moonlight with three men setting out in a currach, a wooden Irish rowboat. For two to three hours at a time, the men—fishermen, farmers, and laborers by day—collected oysters from the sandy sea floor, filling mesh bags to the brim. Making as little noise as possible, they rowed back to the coastline... |
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| From: Jon Koplik | 11/22/2019 1:21:50 AM | | | | | | WSJ -- Bumble Bee Foods LLC Files for Bankruptcy .................................................
Nov. 21, 2019
Bumble Bee Files for Bankruptcy With $925 Million Offer From Taiwan’s FCF
Taiwan seafood company FCF Fishery’s offer for canned tuna maker includes $275 million in cash
By Alexander Gladstone
Bumble Bee Foods LLC, one of the nation’s largest canned tuna providers, filed for bankruptcy protection Thursday with an agreement to sell its assets to Taiwan’s FCF Fishery Co. for roughly $925 million.
San Diego-based Bumble Bee, owned by London-based private-equity firm Lion Capital, said that a chapter 11 process will help facilitate the sale to FCF as well as “reduce its debt burden caused by recent and significant legal challenges.”
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bumble Bee was preparing to file for bankruptcy within days as it faces mounting legal expenses stemming from its involvement in a conspiracy to fix prices on canned tuna.
Bumble Bee pleaded guilty in 2017 and agreed to pay a $25 million fine for having formed a cartel with its two main competitors, Chicken of the Sea International and StarKist Co. The Justice Department subsequently indicted former Bumble Bee Chief Executive Christopher Lischewski for his alleged role in the conspiracy. Mr. Lischewski, who pleaded not guilty, took a leave of absence from Bumble Bee last year and is on trial in California federal court.
Chief Financial Officer Kent McNeil said in a declaration filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., Thursday that the $25 million criminal fine from the DOJ, as well as civil litigation from Bumble Bee’s customers and related legal expenses, resulted in the company’s default on its term loan and ultimately its decision to file for bankruptcy.
In addition to the hit from the antitrust probe, the company is facing class-action lawsuits from consumers, distributors and retailers over the conspiracy. Other consumers suing Bumble Bee have said it wrongfully labeled its tuna as being produced through “dolphin-safe” fishing methods. Bumble Bee has said its labeling was justified.
Bumble Bee has 41% of the U.S. canned tuna market and roughly 13% of the U.S. share of sales of canned “light meat” tuna, according to Mr. McNeil. It also has about 40% of U.S. sardine sales. But the company’s earnings have been hurt by an industry-wide slowdown as young consumers increasingly prefer fresh food and gravitate toward newer and more upscale brands.
FCF’s stalking horse bid, which will be tested at a bankruptcy auction, includes $275 million cash and $638.6 million of debt. The Taiwanese company has also agreed to pay the remaining $17 million Bumble Bee owes to the Justice Department.
The canned tuna seller is entering bankruptcy with up to $280 million in bankruptcy financing, provided by its existing lenders, so it can continue operating in chapter 11 pending completion of the sale.
Bumble Bee’s roots date back more than a century when the Columbia River Packers Association began fishing for tuna off the Oregon coast and established the Bumble Bee tuna brand.
The company has hired law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, investment bank Houlihan Lokey Inc. and restructuring firm AlixPartners LLP to handle its chapter 11 case.
-- Josh Beckerman contributed to this article.
Write to Alexander Gladstone at alexander.gladstone@wsj.com
Copyright © 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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| To: Jon Koplik who wrote (1372) | 11/22/2019 12:41:21 PM | | From: Neeka | | | | That is just sad. I remember delivering fresh albacore tuna to the Bumblebee canning plant in Astoria. The old building is still there and has been converted to a restaurant and offices as well as a gift shop and museum.
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| From: Jon Koplik | 5/1/2021 2:40:19 PM | | | | | | The Surprising Success Story of Fish Sticks ..................................................
April 26, 2021
The Surprising Success Story of Fish Sticks
The 1950s convenience food has enjoyed a winning streak -- no less so than during the Covid-19 pandemic
/https://public-media.si-cdn.com/filer/da/b7/dab7d9cf-d87d-4e4d-8792-cf8ea7c8e586/gettyimages-3305193.jpg)
British schoolchildren dig into a lunch of fish sticks in 1974. Since its debut in 1953, the frozen food has proved to be a hit among kids and adults, owing to its palatability, low cost, and convenience.
By Ute Eberle, Hakai Magazine
smithsonianmag.com
There are many curious facts about fish sticks. The invention of this frozen food warranted a U.S. patent number, for instance: US2724651A. The record number of them stacked into a tower is 74. And, every year, a factory in Germany reportedly produces enough fish sticks to circle the Earth four times.
But the most peculiar thing about fish sticks may be their mere existence. They debuted on October 2, 1953, when General Foods released them under the Birds Eye label. The breaded curiosities were part of a lineup of newly introduced rectangular foods, which included chicken sticks, ham sticks, veal sticks, eggplant sticks, and dried lima bean sticks. Only the fish stick survived. More than that, it thrived. In a world in which many people are wary of seafood, the fish stick spread even behind the Iron Curtain of the Cold War.
Beloved by some, merely tolerated by others, the fish stick became ubiquitous—as much an inevitable food rite of passage for kids as a cultural icon. There’s an entire South Park episode devoted to riffing off the term fish stick, and the artist Banksy featured the food in a 2008 exhibit. When Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her 90th birthday in 2016, Birds Eye presented her with a sandwich valued at US $257 that included blanched asparagus, saffron mayonnaise, edible flowers, caviar, and—most prominently—gold leaf–encrusted fish sticks.
 A frozen block of fish is transported on a conveyor to be processed into fish sticks.
To explain why the fish stick became successful, there’s probably no better guide than Paul Josephson, the self-described “Mr. Fish Stick.” Josephson teaches Russian and Soviet history at Colby College in Maine, but his research interests are wide ranging (think sports bras, aluminum cans, and speed bumps). In 2008, he penned what is still the defining scholarly paper on fish sticks. That research required him to get information from seafood companies, which proved unexpectedly challenging. “In some ways, it was easier to get into Soviet archives having to do with nuclear bombs,” he recalls.
Josephson dislikes fish sticks. Even as a kid, he didn’t understand why they were so popular. “I found them dry,” he says. Putting aside personal preference, Josephson insists that the world didn’t ask for fish sticks. “No one ever demanded them.”
Instead, the fish stick solved a problem that had been created by technology: too much fish. Stronger diesel engines, bigger boats, and new materials increased catches after the Second World War. Fishers began scooping up more fish than ever before, says Josephson. To keep them from spoiling, fish were skinned, gutted, deboned, and frozen on board.
Frozen food, however, had a terrible reputation. Early freezers chilled meat and vegetables slowly, causing the formation of large ice crystals that turned food mushy upon defrosting.
 Fish sticks are cut from a block.
That all changed in the 1920s, when entrepreneur Clarence Birdseye developed a novel freezing technique, in which food was placed between metal plates chilled to at least -30 °C. Food froze so quickly that the dreaded ice crystals couldn’t form. But when used on fish, the method created large blocks of intermingled fillets that, when pried apart, tore into “mangled, unappetizing chunks,” wrote Josephson. The fishing industry tried selling the blocks whole, as fishbricks. These were packaged like blocks of ice cream, with the idea that a housewife could chop off however much fish she wanted that day. But supermarkets had little luck selling the unwieldy bricks, and many stores even lacked adequate freezer space to display them.
Success came when the bricks were cut into standardized sticks. In a process that has remained essentially unchanged, factories run the frozen fish blocks through an X-ray machine to ensure they’re bone-free, then use bandsaws to cut them into slices. These “fingers” are dumped into a batter of egg, flour, salt, and spices, and then breaded. Afterward, they’re briefly tossed into hot oil to set the coating. The whole process takes about 20 minutes, during which the fish remains frozen, even when dunked in the deep fryer.
In 1953, 13 companies produced 3.4 million kilograms of fish sticks. A year later, four million kilograms were produced by another 55 companies. This surge in popularity was partly due to a marketing push that stressed the convenience of the new food: “no bones, no waste, no smell, no fuss,” as one Birds Eye advertisement proclaimed.
The appeal of fish sticks is somewhat paradoxical. They contain fish, but only that with the mildest flavor—and that fish has been dressed up to resemble chicken tenders.
 Factory employees sort fish on a conveyor.
The battered disguise may be needed because, at least in North America, seafood has often been second-tier. “We’ve mostly considered the eating of fish to be beneath our aspirations,” writes chef and author Barton Seaver in American Seafood. Traditionally, fish was associated with sacrifice and penance—food to eat when meat was unaffordable or, if you were Catholic, to eat on the many days when red meat is verboten. Fish also spoils fast, smells bad, and contains sharp bones that pose a choking hazard.
The advent of fish sticks made eating fish easier and more palatable for the seafood wary. “You can almost pretend that it isn’t fish,” says Ingo Heidbrink, a maritime historian at Old Dominion University in Virginia. In his native Germany, where a reported seven million people eat fish sticks at least once a week, companies changed the fish at least three times since its introduction, from cod to pollock to Alaska pollock, a distinct species. “Consumers didn’t seem to notice,” says Heidbrink.
Josephson calls fish sticks “the ocean’s hot dogs.” Served as casseroles or alongside mashed potatoes, they quickly became standby meals for school lunches and family dinners. During the pandemic, demand has risen— in some countries reportedly by up to 50 percent—as families stock up on convenience foods during lockdowns.
Surprisingly, fish sticks are fairly sustainable. Today, most contain Alaska pollock, which is largely sourced from well-managed fisheries, says Jack Clarke, a sustainable seafood advocate at the United Kingdom–based Marine Conservation Society. The climate impact of fish sticks is small, too. “I was surprised at how low it was,” says Brandi McKuin, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who recently studied Alaska pollock products. Each kilogram of fish sticks produces about 1.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide, which “rivals the climate impact of tofu,” she says. Beef, by comparison, produces over 100 times that amount of carbon dioxide per kilogram.
But not everyone seems confident about what exactly they’re eating when they consume the breaded fish. In the United Kingdom, where fish sticks are known as fish fingers, a survey revealed that one in five young adults believes they are actually the fingers of fish.
They still eat them happily.
This article is from Hakai Magazine, an online publication about science and society in coastal ecosystems.
© 2021 Smithsonian Magazine.
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