Not all Alaska pollock comes from Alaska.
Some of the fish, a source of deep pride for Alaskans, is harvested in Russian waters. Some is caught off the coast of Japan and Korea. But no matter its origin, federal regulations allow any walleye pollock distributed, sold, and consumed in the United States, whether in the form of fish sticks or a miso-glazed filet, to bear a label that calls Alaska home.
The fish-labeling policy, maintained by the Food and Drug Administration, has long riled Alaskan seafood companies and fisheries. But Russian fish masquerading as Alaskan, when tensions between Moscow and Washington keep escalating, has politicians and others furious. Russia’s recent ban on American food importsincluding all seafoodhas only made it worse. The U.S. still imports pollock, salmon, and crab from Russia, but nothing goes out.
That hasn’t sat well with fisherman and politicians alike, who have called for the U.S. to impose a retaliatory ban on Russian seafood.
“Yeah, it may be a trade war, but you know what? We’re always the good guy,” Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, who is up for reelection this year, tells National Journal. “They take the product out of their country that we’ve been selling, they tell us that we can’t sell there any longer, and they just assume we’re not going to do anything. When you’ve got bullies, you gotta stand up to them.”
In other words, payback for pollock. And the entire Alaska congressional delegation is stepping in. Begich, Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Republican Rep. Don Young have sent a letter to the FDA last month calling for a change in the market name for pollock that would differentiate fish harvested in Alaskan waters from fish caught in Russian waters. According to the FDA, “pollock” and “Alaska pollock” are acceptable marketplace names for the species of walleye pollock, a member of the cod family found in the North Pacific. That includes the pollock imported from Russia.
Labeling rules can be murky within the Agriculture Department, too. Take the Agricultural Marketing Services’ Country of Origin Labeling Division, which oversees retail labels. The “X” on a “product of X” food label can be the home country of the vessel that harvested wild-caught fish and shellfish in U.S. waters, says Julie Henderson, the division’s director. And that ship doesn’t have to be American. “Wild-Caught Alaskan Pollock Product of Russia” is an acceptable label, she says. So is “Alaskan Salmon Product of China.”
Murkowski says the FDA’s labeling policy misleads consumers. After all, most people expect Alaska pollock to come from Alaska.
“When you have effectively an imposter product, which the Russian pollock is, that takes a dent out of the Alaskan market, and it impacts our reputation,” she said. “So it’s unfortunate that we would kind of come to this place where we have to ask the FDA to make this change.”
FDA spokeswoman Lauren Sucher said that the agency will respond to the lawmakers’ letter “soon,” and could not comment on it before doing so.
Alaskans have legitimate reason to be concerned about the imposter fish. In Russia, pollock fisheries are poorly regulated, and sustainable practices are not top priority. Russian government and industry officials have even said so themselves, explaining that fishermen rarely comply with restrictions, according to a March report in the journal Marine Policy on illegal and unreported fish in U.S. seafood imports.
“It just has to burn a little bit for these Alaska fishermen to know that the Russian market and the Russian fishermen are riding on our good name and our good reputation of sustainability and really a world-class product,” Murkowski says.
So how does Russian pollock become Alaska pollock? First, the fish is harvested in Russian waters, gutted, and frozen. Then, it’s sold and transported to China, where it’s thawed, processed, and frozen again. Blocks of the frozen fish are then exported to the U.S., where distributors can legally slap an “Alaska pollock” label across the packaging.
“There’s nothing illegal with currently labeling it as Alaska pollock, so I’m not trying to sound like anyone is misleading anybody, because this is legal,” says Pat Shanahan, program director of the Association of Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers, or GAPP, which represents pollock companies in the state. But she doesn’t think it should be, and her organization also sent a letter to the FDA in September asking the agency to amend the accepted marketplace name for this fish to simply “pollock.”
Sucher said the FDA is evaluating GAPP’s request. Murkowski said that GAPP asked her and the other lawmakers for help.
These days, people care about where their food comes from more than ever beforehow it’s raised, grown, and harvested. Packaging labels provide a level of transparency about ingredients and nutrients that was inconceivable just a few decades ago. The same goes for a particular food’s origin: Shoppers like knowing the provenance of their products. Federal labeling policies allow some pollock sellers to mask it, and consumers aren’t always getting the truth.
“For FDA to just kind of blanket everything as Alaska pollock, which includes Russian pollock, I think is a big mistake,” says Begich.
And it’s a mistake that must be remedied fast, Begich says. If the lawmakers have not heard back from the FDA after the midterm elections, he says, “we’ll drag them in front of a hearing” of the Senate Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard, which Begich chairs.
For Begich, there is more at stake here than truth in advertising. Reclaiming the Alaska pollock name would send a message to Moscow that Washington condemns the yearlong embargo on U.S. seafood products. If the State Department cannot eventually convince Russia to reconsider the ban, Begich says, “we should cut the Russians out of the U.S. market, let us sell our own seafood products to our own people, and tell Russia, ‘take a hike.’ ”
2014 by National Journal Group Inc