Quest for quality.

• Author: Schneider, Douglas
• Position: Salmon quality - Includes related article on Canadian quality control - Industry Overview

A science writer with the Alaska Sea Grant College Program reports on the need to improve salmon quality.

Last summer's collapse in Alaska salmon prices taught fishermen and processors some difficult but long overdue lessons. They learned, for example, that competition from higher-quality farmed salmon, and a glut of salmon -- both farmed and wild -- has eroded Alaska's share of the world market. Now fishermen and processors must learn perhaps their hardest lesson yet: that salmon quality is an issue they no longer can ignore if they expect to get those markets back.

"In the global market today, the salmon setting the quality standard are farmed salmon," says Kevin O'Sullivan, coordinator for salmon quality with the Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI), a state-, federal- and industry-funded group that promotes Alaska seafood. "We have to respond to that."

Responding effectively may mean changing industry attitudes founded on a nearly 100-year-old practice of stuffing salmon into a can. "We don't worry about what salmon look like because we still have the mind-set that salmon are going into a can," says Chuck Crapo, a seafood quality specialist with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program. "That attitude has to change because a lot more salmon are going into fresh and fresh-frozen markets where appearance and quality are everything."

Crapo's view of the industry comes from firsthand experience. He has worked for five seafood processing firms, including stints as plant manager for Icicle Seafoods and quality control manager with Petersburg Fisheries and Sitka Sound Seafoods. He now conducts research on seafood quality and processing technologies at the UAF Fishery Industrial Technology Center in Kodiak. Crapo counts himself among a small army of seafood experts who say Alaska's salmon problems are due in large part to a lackadaisical attitude toward quality.

Regional Rankings. Quality was a key focus of a United States General Accounting Office study of Bristol Bay sockeye salmon prices conducted following last summer's strike by the bay's fishermen. The study found that increased Japanese imports of high-quality farmed salmon played a significant role in Alaska's dwindling share of the Japanese sockeye market.

According to Craig Wiese, business management specialist at the UAF Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program, Japanese fish buyers -- long regarded as sticklers for quality -- place Bristol Bay sockeyes at the bottom of the heap. "Japanese buyers don't favor the Bristol Bay sockeyes because they consider them not as well handled as farmed salmon or wild sockeye salmon from elsewhere in Alaska," says Wiese, who last November participated in a 10-day tour of Japanese salmon on marketing and distribution networks.

Lawmakers and fishing industry representatives took part in the tour sponsored by the Alaska Office of Commercial Fisheries Development and the Japanese Overseas Fishery Cooperative Foundation of Tokyo. Industry sources in Japan told Wiese they regard wild salmon from Canadian waters as the best quality -- and therefore the most desirable -- salmon. Next on the desirability scale are sockeyes from the Copper River Delta, Southeast Alaska, Cook Inlet and the Chignik/Kodiak region. Last on the scale are sockeyes from Bristol Bay.

Bristol Bay sockeyes are dead last in the eyes and palate of the Japanese mostly because they believe the salmon aren't frozen as quickly as salmon from other areas, and because they believe the salmon suffer more damage caused by poor handling. Another important factor is that Bristol Bay sockeyes are not as fatty as most other salmon.

According to Terry Johnson, a Marine Advisory Program agent in Dillingham, the Japanese are willing to pay for their preference. Again, Bristol...