Last U.S. sardine cans being packed in Maine USA

[Cees Binkhorst]

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Last U.S. sardine cans being packed in Maine
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2010-04-14-last-sardines_N.htm
By Clarke Canfield, Associated Press Writer
PROSPECT HARBOR, Maine — The intensely fishy smell of herring has been
the smell of money for generations of workers in Maine
<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/Places,+Geography/States,+Territories,+Provinces,+Islands/U.S.+States/Maine>

who have snipped, sliced and packed the small, silvery fish into
billions of cans of sardines on their way to Americans' lunch buckets
and kitchen cabinets.

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.

Lela Anderson, 78, has worked in sardine canneries since the 1940s and
was among the fastest in sardine-packing contests that were held back in
the day. Her packing days are over; now she's a quality-control
inspector looking over the bite-sized morsels in can after can that
passes by her.

"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.

Once considered an imported delicacy, sardines now have a humble
reputation. They aren't one species of fish. Instead, sardines are any
of dozens of small, oily, cold-water fish that are part of the herring
family that are sold in tightly packed cans.

Production at Maine canneries has been sliding since peaking at 384
million cans in 1950. Faced with declining demand and a changing
business climate, the plants went by the wayside one by one until, five
years ago, the Stinson plant was the last one standing. Last year it
produced 30 million cans.

Still, it came as a surprise to employees when Bumble Bee Foods — 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 from countries with lower
labor costs — primarily from China and Thailand — and thin margins and
low prices on the retail market.

Sardines at one time were an inexpensive staple for many Americans who
enjoyed a can or two — or perhaps a sardine sandwich — for lunch.

The first U.S. sardine cannery opened in Maine in 1875, when a New York
businessman set up the Eagle Preserved Fish Co. in Eastport.

Dozens of plants soon popped up, sounding loud horns and whistles to
alert local workers when a boat came in with its catch from the
herring-rich ocean waters off Maine. By 1900 there were 75 canneries,
where knife-wielding men, women and young children expertly sliced off
heads and tails and removed innards before packing them tight into
sardine tins.

These days most of the canning is automated and the fish are cut with
machines, though still packed by hand. The Stinson packers are all women
because they are thought to have stronger backs and better dexterity
than men, according to plant manager Peter Colson.

Inside the spacious Stinson plant, dozens of workers in hairnets, aprons
and gloves sort, pack and cook the herring that stream along flumes and
conveyors. The fish are blanched in a 208-degree steamer for 12 minutes
and later, cooked in sealed cans at about 250 degrees for 35 minutes.

Ear plugs muffle the cacophony of clanking cans, rattling conveyor
belts, rumbling motors and hissing steam. A fishy smell hangs in the
air. Outside, a billboard-sized sign of a fisherman in yellow oilskins
holding an oversized can of Beach Cliff sardines, the plant's primary
product, serves as reminder of Maine's long sardine history.

Colson has been in the sardine business for 38 years. He got his first
job as a youngster at another cannery, an hour's drive away, where his
father was the manager.

"This is it. We don't have any more," Colson said as he watched workers
swiftly pack cans in assembly line fashion. "It's not easy seeing this go."

Ronnie Peabody, who runs the Maine Coast Sardine History Museum in the
town of Jonesport 35 miles up the road from the Stinson plant, has a
cookbook published in 1950 called "58 Ways to Serve Sardines." It
includes recipes for sardine soup, sardine casserole, baked eggs and
sardines, and creamed sardines and spinach.

Sardine consumption began falling decades ago, he said, after canned
tuna came on the market and Americans' tastes changed. The closing of
the last U.S. cannery is the end of an era, he said.

"It's like reading an obituary in the paper," he said. "It's really sad,
but what can you do?"

The fish — usually packed in oil or in sauces such as mustard, hot
sauce, tomato or green chilies — can still be had at supermarkets for a
little over $1 a can.

When the last sardine can is packed on Thursday, plant workers say it'll
be like a family being split up.

Many of the employees have worked together for decades. Anderson, a tiny
woman with strong hands and a strong back from years of packing small
fish pieces into cans, said she'll be leaving behind close friends when
the plant closes.

But she won't much miss the sardines, which she doesn't eat.

"I'm not saying I hate them," she said, "I'm just saying I'm not a big
eater of them."

Talks are in the works to sell the plant to another company to process
lobster or other seafoods. Bumble Bee has invested more than $11 million
in the plant in recent years, and there's a work force at the ready.

Bumble Bee operates one of the last two U.S. clam canneries, in Cape
May, N.J., and of the last two domestic tuna canneries, in California.
But the days of sardine canning in the U.S. are probably gone, said
Chris Lischewski, Bumble Bee's president and CEO.

"I would never say never, but I'd say it's pretty unlikely," Lischewski
said in a phone interview from California.

In Monterey, Calif., a group of self-described "sardinistas" has taken
on the task of trying to get Americans to eat more sardines. It was in
Monterey where sardine canneries were made famous in John Steinbeck
<http://content.usatoday.com/topics/topic/People/Celebrities/Authors/John+Steinbeck>'s

1945 novel, "Cannery Row," about the misfits and outcasts on a street
lined with sardine canneries.

The group is formulating a business plan in hopes of returning "the
lowly sardine to the American palate," said Mike Sutton, a vice
president at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who says sardines — high in
beneficial omega-3 fatty acids, low in contaminants — are among the
healthiest seafoods around.

But not canned sardines. Sutton's group wants to promote fresh sardines
sold at white-tablecloth restaurants or in foil packs or in prepared
foods at retail stores, much the way tuna and salmon are now sold.

"We recognize the American public turns their noses up at sardines,"
Sutton said. "It may be a challenge and it may be insurmountable, but
our motto is 'It's not your grandfather's sardine."'

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