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The last sardine cannery in the US will shut down this week. I love sardines, I make an open face sandwich of sardines, topped with cheese and run under the broiler until the cheese is all melted and bubbly. I know a lot of people don't like sardines, but it's the end of an era here and rather sad.
It's as much a statement of what over fishing our coastal waters has done as what foreign competition is doing.
It seems that overfishing and competition from China and Taiwan have killed the market here in the US.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100414/ap_on_bi_ge/us_so_long_sardines
It's as much a statement of what over fishing our coastal waters has done as what foreign competition is doing.
For the past 135 years, sardine canneries have been as much a part of Maine's small coastal villages as the thick Down East fog. It's been estimated that more than 400 canneries have come and gone along the state's long, jagged coast.
The lone survivor, the Stinson Seafood plant here in this eastern Maine shoreside town, shuts down this week after a century in operation. It is the last sardine cannery not just in Maine, but in the United States.
"It just doesn't seem possible this is the end," Anderson lamented last week while taking a break at the plant where she's worked for 54 years. She and nearly 130 co-workers will lose their jobs.
It seems that overfishing and competition from China and Taiwan have killed the market here in the US.
Still, it came as a surprise to employees when Bumble Bee Foods LLC — which has owned the facility since 2004 — announced in February that the plant would close because of steep cuts in the amount of herring fishermen are allowed to catch in the Northeast. The New England Fishery Management Council set this year's herring quota at 91,000 metric tons — down from 180,000 tons in 2004 — because of the uncertain scientific outlook of the region's herring population.
Shortages have forced San Diego-based Bumble Bee to truck in much of the herring needed at the Maine plant from its other cannery in Blacks Harbour, New Brunswick, and from herring suppliers as far away as New Jersey. Even without the quota cuts, the plant was under pressure from shrinking consumer demand, increased foreign competition — primarily from China and Thailand — and thin margins and low prices on the retail market.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100414/ap_on_bi_ge/us_so_long_sardines
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