By LORI TOBIAS/For YachatsNews
For 10 years, Food Share of Lincoln County processed and distributed hatchery salmon to community food pantries all along the coast, sharing about 2,000 pounds of the protein-rich fish a year. Then in 2018, the nonprofit learned it would no longer be permitted to process the fish due to new food handling regulations and the salmon once abundant in community food pantries was no longer available on pantry shelves.
Now, thanks to an innovative nonprofit designed to help small food processors, 3,020 pounds of hatchery salmon was recently distributed to the community in an effort so successful, a grant request was not only approved but exceeded.
“For years we’ve been trying to figure out how can we recapture the donated fish,” said Nancy Mitchell, executive director of Food Share of Lincoln County. “Over the years, there have been groups trying to do this type of thing, but it never came to fruition. That’s what is so incredible about this. This is a valuable resource, and it was lost and now it’s been recaptured. Really, in these times, that’s such an impact.”
After Food Share learned it could no longer process the salmon, Mitchell sought help from others in the community. A seafood processor tried to help, but the work had to be done between the processing of the commercial fleet’s catch and the salmon was returned to Food Share in bulk in a box, leaving the organization to finish the packing and shipping.
But under safe food regulations, that wasn’t allowed either. So, the nonprofit resigned itself to doing without the salmon. What they didn’t know was that entrepreneur Laura Anderson of Newport was working out the very plan that would help them.
Anderson opened the Yaquina Lab in 2021 with the idea of providing a facility and equipment necessary for small seafood processors to start or test their business concepts without having to spend a small fortune.
A year later, she established the nonprofit Central Coast Food Web to manage the facility. 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 of the now-employee owned Local Ocean restaurant. “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 the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians were 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, culinary program director at Siletz Valley School.
Inspired by the tribe’s work, Jim King, the Food Web’s new director, 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 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.”
Combined efforts
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, manager of the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife’s Salmon River Hatchery in Otis.
Fish from state hatcheries 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.
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 over 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.”
- Lori Tobias is a longtime Newport-based journalist and author who can be reached at ltwriter0815@gmail.com. A version of this story originally appeared Dec. 16, 2024 in The Oregonian/OregonLive
This it’s a great story for the new year! Thanks to all of those who have worked so hard and are succeeding at so many levels. This is humanity at its best.
Love this story! I learned about and toured the Central Coast Food Web facility in December, at the open house, and was so impressed. So glad people are finding ways to help hungry people, build local knowledge about salmon, and get various groups in our community working together for a great reason. Anything to do with saving salmon and the rivers they swim in is a win/win for our local communities. Hooray to all the local people involved in this story, and last of all this story makes me hungry….