July 18, 2005

US outsources fish processing to China
 

US fish processors are sending their seafood to be de-shelled or filleted in China before shipping them back to the US.

One of the fish processors using cheaper Chinese labour is Trident Seafoods, which ships about 30 million pounds (13,600 tonnes) of its 1.2 billion-pound (544 -million-tonne) annual fish catch to China for processing.

Its founder Charles Bundrant said that this is to protect the industry from competition from other farmed seafood from China, Vietnam and Thailand. Imports accounted for 78 percent of the 4.7 billion pounds (2.132 million tonnes) of seafood Americans consumed last year, according to the National Marine Fisheries Service.

As this trend of processing seafood picks up steam, certain states in the US, such as Alaska and Washington, have lost about one-fifth of their processing jobs over the past decade.

Processing cost in China can cost only one-tenth of that in the US, said the third-biggest US seafood company Pacific Seafood, which also started a trial six months ago to process crabs in Qingdao, China.

Another US processing company, Premier Pacific Seafoods, spent built a US$10-million facility last year to prepare Alaskan pollock for sale to processors in China.

Even after factoring in transportation costs from China back into the US, it's still cheaper to process seafood in China, according Trident. US supermarket chains and retailers are also helping to drive the practice, as national retail chains have strict and exacting product specifications which require labour-intensive processing, according to Premier Pacific.

Surefish, a US seafood-inspection company, pointed out that outsourcing has to be monitored to ensure that plants comply with US food-handling standards. The company has reported getting more work from US companies to audit plants in China as more and more US fish is sent for processing there.