Seafood business braces for job losses, cod scarcity from sanctions
THE WORLDWIDE seafood industry is steeling itself for price hikes, supply disruptions and potential job losses as new rounds of economic sanctions on Russia make key species such as cod and crab harder to come by.
The latest round of attempts by the United States to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine includes bans on imports of seafood, alcohol and diamonds. The US is also stripping ‘most favoured nation status’ from Russia. Nations around the world are taking similar steps.
Russia is one of the largest producers of seafood in the world, and was the fifth-largest producer of wild-caught fish, according to a 2020 report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Russia is not one of the biggest exporters of seafood to the US, but it is a world leader in exports of cod (the preference for fish and chips in the US). It is also a major supplier of crabs and Alaska pollock, widely used in fast-food sandwiches and processed products like fish sticks.
The impact is likely to be felt globally, as well as in places with working waterfronts. One of those is Maine, where more than US$50 million in seafood products from Russia passed through Portland in 2021, according to federal statistics.
“If you are getting cod from Russia, it’s going to be a problem,” said Glen Libby, an owner of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, a seafood market in Tenants Harbour, Maine. “That’s quite a mess. We’ll see how it turns out.”
Russia exported more than 28 million pounds (12.7 million kilogrammes) of cod to the US from January 1, 2020, to January 31, 2022, according to census data.
The European Union and United Kingdom are both deeply dependent on Russian seafood. And prices of seafood are already spiking in Japan, a major seafood consumer that is limiting its trade with Russia.
In the UK, where fish and chips are a cultural marker, shop owners and consumers alike are bracing for price surges. British fish and chip shops were already facing a squeeze because of soaring energy costs and rising food prices.
Andrew Crook, head of the National Federation of Fish Friers, said earlier this month that even before the war, he expected a third of Britain’s fish and chip shops to go out of business. If fish prices shoot up even higher, “we are in real dire straits,” he said.
In mid-March, the UK slapped a 35 per cent tariff hike on Russian whitefish, including chip-shop staples cod and haddock.
“We are a massive part of UK culture and it would be a shame to see that go,” he told broadcaster ITV.
US consumers are most likely to notice the impact of sanctions via price and availability of fish, said Kanae Tokunaga, who runs the Coastal and Marine Economics Lab at Gulf of Maine Research Institute in Portland.
“Because seafood is a global commodity, even if they are not harvested in Russia, you will notice the price hike,” Tokunaga said.