Uncategorized
USDA Purchases $68M of Wild Alaska Seafood
Federal agriculture officials have purchased more than $68 million in wild Alaska sockeye salmon and $8 million in Pacific rockfish fillets from Alaska and the West Coast, taking a lot of the leftover 2022 harvest off of the market.
An added bonus, according to Bruce Schactler, food aid program and development director for the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), is that this could give millions of people their first taste of wild Alaska sockeye salmon.
Efforts to market the past season’s abundance, mostly millions of pounds of sockeyes from the Bristol Bay fishery, have been in motion since the 2022 season ended.
“It finally came to fruition, a little later than we hoped,” Schactler said.
The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has a variety of domestic programs, and its purch...