For ten years, Food Share of Lincoln County prepared hatchery salmon and shared roughly 2,000 pounds of the high-protein fish annually with community food pantries throughout the coastal area. The salmon, which had been plentiful in community food pantries, was no longer available on pantry shelves when the charity organization discovered in 2018 that it would no longer be allowed to prepare the fish because of laws controlling safe food handling.
Now, 3,020 pounds of hatchery salmon were recently given to the community by a creative nonprofit organization created to support local food processors. The endeavor was so successful that a grant funding request was not only fulfilled but surpassed.
Nancy Mitchell, executive director of Food Share of Lincoln County, stated, “We have been trying for years to figure out how we can recapture the donated fish.” Groups have attempted to accomplish this kind of thing over the years, but it has never been successful. That’s what makes this so amazing. This is a precious resource that was lost and has since been found again. That really makes a difference in these times.
When Food Share discovered it could no longer handle the fish six years ago, Mitchell turned to the community for assistance. A seafood processor made an effort to assist, but the agency was left to handle the packing and shipment after the commercial fleet’s catch was processed and the salmon was returned to Food Share in bulk in a box. But that was also prohibited by safe food regulations. The charity organization decided to forgo the salmon. They were unaware that businesswoman Laura Anderson was developing the exact strategy that would benefit them.
When Anderson opened the Yaquina Lab in 2021, she did so with the idea of providing a facility with the equipment necessary for small seafood processors to start or test their business concepts without having to spend a small fortune. In order to oversee the Newport bayfront facility, she founded the charity Central Coast Food Web a year later. Its mission: to strengthen our local, coastal and regional food systems by providing services and support to small, independent food producers and making it easier for all people to eat local food. To that end, her idea has been a welcome success.
But, as it turned out, Anderson s vision was not fully realized.
What happened was we built a board of directors that really broadened by vision, including opening it to farmers, said Anderson, founder and former owner ofLocal Oceanrestaurant, now employee owned. So, a couple of our board members said we should be feeding the hungry people in our community. We should be serving our most underserved population. I said that is great, but I have no idea how we are going to do that.
At least part of the answer was right there at the Food Web, where theConfederated Tribes of Siletz Indianswere processing hatchery fish. It was just a natural fit, Anderson said. They didn t need anything else from us, other than the facility. They brought the fish and intergenerational tribal members to cut the fish and get it in the freezer. And as a kind of adjunct to that, they brought five high school students from the tribe to do hands on intergenerational learning doing that kind of skill building, knowledge transfer, experiential learning.
The fish processed by the tribe is used for school cafeteria lunches and distributed to the tribe for other programs, said Patrick Clarke, Siletz Valley School culinary program director.
Inspired by the tribe s work, Jim King, the new director of the Food Web, turned to Mitchell to see if the hatchery salmon might be something the food pantry could use. Of course, Mitchell had been waiting for someone like King for years.
Weeks later, a crew from Food Share paid a visit to the Salmon River Hatchery in Otis, where they picked up 151 Chinook salmon. The fish not only benefited Food Share, which distributed 1,288 dinners to community food pantries, but the Siletz tribe and the Seafood Butchery program operated by Oregon Coast Visitor s Association in five coastal schools. The butchery program started last April and is expected to expand into as many as 10 schools next year. Students in the program learn to process and cook all manner of seafood and later enjoy their efforts, or in some cases are able to take the seafood home.
In the Siletz Valley Schools, Clarke prefers to call the program Seafood Literacy.
It s so much more than just butchery, Clarke said. The Oregon Coast Visitors Association provides me with the fish, the funds to process it and the story to connect it all with the students. We are practicing traditional methods with all the fish, historically significant preserving methods and cooking methods, the full scope of it. We have a full culinary program that starts in middle school and has several tiers through high school. They get French culinary education combined with traditional Native methods.
While a visitors association may seem like an odd entity to be promoting seafood butchery, program leader Maggie Michaels says it makes perfectly good sense.
The reason the visitors association is doing this is because the amount of tourist dollars coming in, particularly to the coast, is enormous, Michaels said. And if we want not only our guests, but our folks who live here, to find and buy more Oregon seafood, then we need to also think about making sure that we have enough filleters. And we also need to think about housing. None of these things are separate from tourism. They re all actually quite connected.
Using hatchery salmon to feed those in need is not new but has been going on around the state for years, said Michelle Viss, supervisor of the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife s Salmon River Hatchery in Otis. State hatchery fisheries are operated by the state fish and wildlife agency. The fish are used for a variety of programs, including stock for recreational fishing. Fish not donated to community agencies, which must be certified by the Oregon Food Bank, are returned to the water as stream enrichment to feed other wildlife, Viss said.
In Tillamook, The Smiley Salmon Harvest, formerly known as Smiley Brothers, has been processing fish from the Nehalem Bay Fish Hatchery since 2009. This year s hatchery collection brought the number of salmon processed in the last 15 years to about 11,000. The salmon is distributed as canned or frozen to food pantries and senior meal and school backpack programs.
In Lincoln County, it appears this fall s hatchery salmon pilot program is just the beginning.
When the Central Coast Food Web requested $43,000 from the Roundhouse Foundation to continue the program with both Food Share and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians for another year, the request was met with a grant of $90,000 for three years, said King.
For Mitchell, it s the end to a six-year quest.
Here on the coast our resources are sometimes limited, she said. This is an opportunity for us to show that when we put our heads together and collaborate, we can really come up with an impactful outcome; to show we can be innovative and really take care of our community.
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