Contact:

Michael Ciaramella, NYSG Seafood Safety & Technology Specialist, P: 631-632-8730, E: mc2544@cornell.edu


New York Sea Grant has drafted 12 novel resource guides to help seafood producers navigate the regulatory framework surrounding seafood production, processing, and sales in New York State

Stony Brook, NY, March 8, 2021 - A clear understanding of the regulatory requirements surrounding seafood production, processing, and sales is crucial to ensure resilience and sustainable growth in the New York seafood industry.

Quickly and effectively altering marketing strategies for seafood products can be challenging due to the complex regulatory structure surrounding the processing and sales of seafood in New York. Consolidated and easy to interpret resources outlining the requirements for marketing seafood is integral to the success and resilience of the New York seafood industry. This became very apparent during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic with the industry’s need to quickly adapt to new strategies for marketing its seafood.

To help seafood producers better navigate the regulatory framework surrounding the harvest, production, processing, and sales of seafood in New York, New York Sea Grant (NYSG) coordinated a Seafood Direct Marketing Task Force to start drafting guidance documents. The task force consisted of Federal and State agencies as well as industry and academic partners representing fishery and aquaculture producers in New York.

These NYSG-coordinated efforts resulted in the drafting of three regulatory guides covering wild harvest fisheries, aquaculture, and bivalve molluscan shellfish production; processing; and sales. To complement these guides and provide more detail on some of the requirements outlined, a series of nine supplementary resources were drafted. The interactive PDFs are at www.nyseagrant.org/seafoodguides and are also featured at www.nyseagrant.org/rapidresponse. They are housed online on the NYSG website to allow for regular updates to ensure they are quickly adapted to address regulatory changes and meet industry needs.

Project Partners:

• Hudson Valley Fisheries
• Long Island Commercial Fishing Association
• New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets
• New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
• New York State Department of Health
• Upward Farms
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration
• Suffolk County Department of Economic Development and Planning
• Funding: National Sea Grant Office COVID-19 Rapid Response grant


More Info: New York Sea Grant

New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Sea Grant College Program.

Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated research, education and extension services promoting coastal community economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.

Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries, federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers, educators, the media and the interested public.

The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY Buffalo, SUNY Oswego and the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office in Newark. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook University in Long Island, Brooklyn College and Cornell Cooperative Extension in NYC and Elmsford and Kingston in the Hudson Valley.

For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has RSS, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.