Representatives Chellie Pingree and Bruce Poliquin will testify at a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee tomorrow in support of a bill that would exempt sea urchins and sea cucumbers from federal inspection when they are imported to or exported from the United States.
Sea urchins and sea cucumbers, harvested in the Gulf of Maine, have a shelf life of seven days and are regularly sold to buyers in Asia, but delays in shipping while awaiting inspection by federal regulators have resulted in spoilage of the highly perishable product. Since the 1970s, all shellfish, including lobsters, have been exempted from these U.S. Fish and Wildlife (USFW) inspections. In 2014, USFW began imposing inspection requirements of sea urchins and sea cucumbers on Maine exporters.
Sea urchin and sea cucumber exporters in Maine contacted Pingree and Poliquin for help with the inspection requirements and last year Pingree introduced a bill (HR 4245) to exempt sea urchins and sea cucumbers, with Poliquin joining as the original cosponsor. Pingree has also met with Dan Ashe, the Director of USFWS, to discuss the issue.
The hearing is being held at the request of a letter that Poliquin sent to the House Natural Resources Committee last month.
"These inspections have resulted in the loss of a highly valuable and highly perishable product," Pingree said. "There is really no need for sea urchins to be inspected but not shellfish. There isn't any scientific basis for singling out this species and it just doesn't make sense."
"These unfair regulations are ill-conceived and unfairly burden Maine's sea urchin and sea cucumber industry," said Poliquin. "I'm honored to stand up for the hundreds of hardworking Mainers that make up this important industry to ensure that their jobs are not put into jeopardy by burdensome and needless regulations.”
Sea urchins and sea cucumbers are not technically shellfish but are classified as echinoderms.
The USFW inspections on processed sea urchins and cucumbers being exported to Asia take place at JFK Airport in New York, where they can sometimes sit in hot warehouses for a number of days before an inspector arrives.
"The urchin fishery employs about 600 people in Maine and we can't afford to put those jobs at risk with unnecessary red tape and bureaucracy," Pingree said.
In addition to Pingree and Poliquin, two other Mainers will testify: Atchan Tamaki owns ISF Trading, a sea urchin and sea cucumber processor in Portland and President of the Maine Sea Urchin and Sea Cucumber Association. Joseph Leask from Rockwood is the Chairman of the State of Maine Department of Marine Resources Sea Urchin Zone Council.
