STANDARDIZING THE TASTE OF TRADITION:
MARYLAND CRAB CAKES FROM THAILAND
By
Kelly Feltault
Submitted to the
Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences
of American University
in Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for the Degree
of Doctor of Philosophy
In
Anthropology
Chair: __{3--"-!Uft__::_-=--~-·--· _:.__:______Dr. Brett Williams w~ ~a>
Dr. · Broad
2009
American University
Washington, D.C. 20016
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Copyright 2009 by Feltault, Kelly
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To my husband, who only eats crab claws. STANDARDIZING THE TASTE OF TRADITION:
MARYLAND CRAB CAKES
FROM THAILAND
BY
Kelly Feltault
ABSTRACT
Blue crabs are the main ingredient in Maryland crab cakes, a regional food symbolizing the Chesapeake and Maryland's state identity. As the taste of Maryland, crab cakes invoke authenticity through the Bay's maritime culture and rural coastal communities. However, since 1997 almost eighty percent of the crabmeat consumed in the US has been imported from countries like Thailand, and Maryland crab cakes have become a standardized, mass produced menu item served in restaurants across the US.
By 2008, blue crab stocks in the Chesapeake and Thailand faced collapse.
Policy makers and much of the literature on fisheries would call this a tragedy of the commons while agro-food commodity chains literature has ignored seafood and bifurcated the food system into global and local foods. My dissertation recognizes blue crabs as simultaneously a politically and culturally meaningful food and a natural resource, and examines how Maryland crab cakes became an authenticity niche-a once regional food that continues to symbolize the place and food culture of its origins but is industrially produced for the mass market through our global food system. I argue that
11 transforming the Maryland crab cake into an authenticity niche was a form of accumulation by dispossession integral to neoliberal economic growth strategies in
Maryland and Thailand.
My research reveals how seafood corporations and states are creating value and accumulating capital closer to the point of consumption through two new commodities seafood quality and safety-and how these reshaped the meaning of Maryland crab cakes. For Maryland crab cakes quality is defined through the perceived traditional production practices of Chesapeake crabmeat companies and the symbolic image of
Chesapeake watermen, as well as the physical attributes of crabmeat. Seafood safety means the global governance system HACCP-a science-based, risk assessment approach for preventing and controlling hazards throughout the production-consumption network. In this way, I highlight how states and firms collaborated to enclose, marketized, and commodify culture and nature, but also how such processes in two different locations became interconnected to create a global industry and new forms of power by remaking nature, people, and culture for the global market.
111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project would not have been possible without the support and interest of
many people who have been generous with their time, knowledge, and enthusiasm.
Melissa McCloud of the Center for Chesapeake Studies at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime
Museum and the crabmeat packers and pickers of the Eastern Shore have been part of this
project since 1997 when it was a public history and rural development project. They
spl:}fked my appreciation for the Bay, its communities, and history, and the Shore's crab pickers taught me how to pick crabs "properly" while also making sure I understood the
complexity of the industry and their lives. My dissertation chair, Brett Williams, has read numerous drafts for which I am grateful, and always raised interesting questions
alongside insightful feedback. Brett has also been a wonderful colleague and friend. The rest of my committee, Warren Belasco and Robin Broad, kept me creatively thinking
across disciplines-no small task for a project that bridges food, fisheries, development, and heritage. This multi-disciplinary group showed great enthusiasm for the project and
opened up new ways of thinking about food and the environment as the project progressed. Gabriella Petrick and the other attendees at the Hagley Conference in 2006
encouraged me to pursue the issue of taste and standardization while inspiring me with their own research.
Fieldwork in Thailand was supported by a fellowship from the National
Education Security Project for food and environmental security and a Foreign Language
IV Area Studies grant to study Thai language at the Southeast Asia Summer Studies Institute
(SEASSI) in Madison, Wisconsin. Patcharee Promsuwan and Patcharin Peyasantiwong of the Thai language program at SEASSI deserve much of the credit for taking my Thai language skills from zero to a 3.5 on the Foreign Service language test in just three months. My time in Madison was the best introduction to Thailand I could have asked for. In Thailand, I was a visiting researcher at Walailak University in the Regional
Studies Department, which allowed me to live in Southern Thailand close to the crabmeat companies, but also gave me a chance to meet wonderful colleagues and students. I am grateful to Patrick Jory, head of the Regional Studies Department, and the University for the opportunity. My colleagues Amporn Mardent, Onanong Thippimol, and Saliza Binti
Ismail were constant companions intellectually and emotionally. Our lunch conversations about race and religion in Thailand and Southeast Asia helped me expand my thinking about global food standards and social control, while also giving me a better understanding of Muslim culture and life in southern Thailand. I would not have been able to conduct fieldwork in Thailand without support from several company executives, chiefly Norman Whittington and Lloyd Byrd. I am grateful for their openness and willingness to let me "hang out" in their factories.
During the writing process, the members of the ABD Writing Group-Michelle,
Jodi, Maria, Adelaide, Barbara, Kelly, and Becca-always gave me honest, constructive feedback and were a wonderful sounding board for ideas as well as emotional support.
Finally, my husband has endured periodic visits to hot field sites in the Chesapeake and
Thailand, and long absences-even when I was home writing. He has been a constant
v source of support, laughter, creativity-and lately music (he decided to learn the banjo while I was cloistered in my office writing). Hopefully this is the end of our single income status and the beginning of more bluegrass jams.
Vl TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT . 11
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT IV
LIST OF TABLES x
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Xll
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS XIV
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION: THE STORY OF MARYLAND CRAB CAKES 1
One Big Kitchen
Theorizing Authenticity Niches
Telling the Story of Maryland Crab Cakes
2. THE NATURE OF SEAFOOD SAFETY 52
Food Standards: Quality and Safety
Fish, Pure Food, and Mass Markets
From National to Global Standards
Summary
3. CHESAPEAKE: THE TASTE OF TRADITION 114
Producing the Taste of Tradition
From Industry to Industrial Heritage
Vll Summary
4. DESTINATIO NS: PHILLIPS AND BALTIMORE 160
Destinations: Seaside and City
All-You-Can-Eat Redevelopment
Betting on a Trip to Asia
Summary
5. THAILAND: FROM CAT FOOD TO CRAB CAKE 193
The Fifth Tiger and Seafood Exports
Beating the Jungle for Crabs
Thai HACCP: Controlling People and Nature
Summary
6. THAILAND: KITCHEN OF THE WORLD 244
The Sufficiency Economy: Crabs are Like Mice
Race, Purity and HACCP
Summary
7. THE TASTE OF TRADITION FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA 273
Marketing the Authenticity Niche, 1992-1999
Marketing the Legend of Phillips
Summary
8. CONSUMING THE CHESAPEAKE 299
Stocks and Markets
Waterman's World
Vlll Summary
9. LABELS, AUTHENTICITY, AND TASTE 327
Designating Nature and Place
Investigation No. TA-201: Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs
Afterword
10. CONCLUSION 361
APPENDIX . 371
BIBLIOGRAPHY 386
IX LIST OF TABLES
Table Page
1. The Two Culture Problem of Risk Assessment 63
2. Environmental Contaminants of Seafood . 72
3. Biological, Microbiological and Physical Hazards of Seafood. 79
4. Location of Seafood Packing Plants in the United States, 1940 88
5. The Seven HACCP Principles 110
6. Sample of Maryland Crab Regulations, 1906-1958 126
7. Proposed FDA Crabmeat Standards, 1971. 134
8. Blue Crab Landings, 1950-1990 178
9. Value of Hard Crab Landings for Blue Crab, 1980-1995 180
10. Canned Crabmeat Exports, Thailand, 1986-1990 211
11. Thai Crabmeat Product Codes . 250
12. Product Comparison and Pricing Sheet Descriptions 280
13. Share of Distribution Sales oflmported Crabmeat, 1995-1999 287
14. Increasing Levels of Imported Crabmeat, 1994-1999 . 288
15. Volume and Value of Imported Crabmeat from Thailand, 1994-1999. 290
16. Dockside Prices for Domestic Hard Crabs, 1990-2000. 305
17. Domestic Crabmeat Production Levels, 1995-1998 306
x 18. Domestic Hard Crab Values, 1990-2000 306
19. Changes in Distribution Channels: Domestic Crabmeat, 1995-1999 308
20. Changes in Market Share: Domestic and Imported Crabmeat, 1993-1998 309
21. Changes in Value: Domestic and Imported Crabmeat, 1994-2002 . 309
22. Maryland Recreational Crabbing Regulations 319
23. Percent of Total Eastern Shore Acres Developed for Housing, 1990-1999 322
24. Growth Outside Preferred Areas Before and After Smart Growth Policies 323
Xl LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure Page
1. The Boston Seafood Show . 6
2. The Brooks Brothers of J.M. Clayton Company 115
3. Chesapeake Watershed and Shore Maps 119
4. The Blue Crab . 123
5. Crab Pickers at Work 129
6. Location of Crabmeat Grades in Crab Carapace 130
7. Structure of Chesapeake CrabmeatNetworks, 1930s-1975 136
8. Removing Shell Fragments, circa 1951 . 141
9. "Hockey Puck" and Restaurant Quality Crab Cakes . 146
10. Preparing Miss Lib's Crab Cakes 147
11. Phillips 21st Street Crab House, 2005 167
12. Baltimore Harbor, circa 1934 . 169
13. Phillips HarborPlace Restaurant, 2007 173
14. Sponge Crab 177
15. Map of Thailand 204
16. Maekhaa Selling Crabs in Market, 2006 . 208
17. The Phae in Don Sak, 2006 209
Xll 18. Thai Crabmeat Networks Before 1995 . 212
19. Royal Sea Steaming Station 223
20. Crabmeat Supply Chain After 1997 225
21. The First CCP: Live Crabs . 230
22. The Second CCP: Sorting 232
23. Colossal Jumbo Lump . 233
24. The Third CCP: Cooking 234
25. The Fourth CCP: Traceability . 237
26. The Fifth CCP: Organoleptic Testing 240
27. The Sixth CCP: Shell Removal 241
28. Crab Bank Deposit 260
29. Buddhist and Muslim Phae Owners 266
30. Wiya Crab Products Booth at Thaifex, 2006 . 271
31. Hawkie Melvin, 1999 317
32. Waterfront Homes and Recreational Boaters 320
Xlll LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AOC Appellation d'origine controlee
ASDA American Seafood Distributors Association
BCF Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, US
BOI Board of Investment, Thailand
BRC British Retail Consortium
CCP Critical Control Point
CPUE Catch per Unit Effort
DEP Department of Export Promotion, Thailand
DOC Department of Commerce, US
DOF Department of Fisheries, Thailand
EEZ Exclusive Economic Zone
EPA Environmental Protection Agency, US
EOI Export-Oriented Industrialization
EU European Union
FAO Food and Agriculture Organization, UN
FDCA Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act
GBC Greater Baltimore Committee
GI Geographic Indicator
GMP Good Manufacturing Practice
HACCP Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points
XIV IMF International Monetary Fund
MDNR Maryland Department of Natural Resources
MSSP Model Seafood Surveillance Program
MSY Maximum Sustainable Yield
NAS National Academy of Sciences
NASA National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NBCIA National Blue Crab Industry Association
NESDB National Economic and Social Development Board, Thailand
NFI National Fisheries Institute, US
NMFS National Marine Fisheries Service, US
NSSP National Shellfish Sanitation Program
NTC Non-traditional commodity
SME Small Medium Enterprise
SPS Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement
TFDA Thai Food and Drug Administration
TFFA Thai Frozen Foods Association
TRIPS Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement
USDA US Department of Agriculture
USFDAor FDA US Food and Drug Administration
US ITC US International Trade Commission
WHO World Health Organization
WTO World Trade Organization
xv CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: THE STORY OF MARYLAND CRAB CAKES
To allow the market mechanism to be the sole director of the fate of human beings and their natural environment, would result in the demolition of society, the power to produce food destroyed.
Karl Polanyi The Great Transformation
I find it hard to imagine the Chesapeake Bay without blue crabs. Captain John
Smith first described the Bay as a place of abundance teeming with crabs, fish, and oysters and later Virginia planter William Byrd wrote about eating blue crabs the size of his hand. 1 Small-scale fishermen and family-owned crab processing plants started a commercial crabmeat industry on the Bay's shores in 1880. By the 1930s Chesapeake crabmeat companies shipped fresh crabmeat to restaurants in New York, Pittsburgh,
Chicago and San Francisco where it was used as a substitute for lobster meat.2 Within the Chesapeake, however, the ornery crustacean has never been a substitute. Instead,
blue crabs are the main ingredient for a regional cuisine symbolizing Maryland's state
identity through the Bay. In this state summers are not complete without the taste of blue crabs especially Maryland's signature dish-the Maryland crab cake.
1 Howard Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003).
2 John Wennersten, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2001).
1 2
Although Maryland has other distinct local foods (Maryland stewed tomatoes and muskrat stew come to mind) the crab cake has attained an iconic status as a symbol of
Maryland's cultural heritage. Maryland crab cakes are a simple delicacy made of crabmeat, a little mayonnaise and some spices then hand-formed into patties and lightly sauteed or broiled to a golden hue. Their flavor derives from the slight taste of the sea the Chesapeake imparts to the fresh crabmeat. For locals like me, and the tens of thousands of tourists who flock to the Chesapeake and Maryland's beaches each summer, just thinking about a Maryland crab cake invokes a sweet and savory taste memory that is the essence of summer, the taste of Maryland.
But we all might have to imagine the Bay without blue crabs. On September 23,
2008 the Secretary of Commerce declared the blue crab fishery of the Chesapeake Bay a
"failure."3 This is not a subjective term, but a technical one and is the equivalent of declaring the Chesapeake's blue crabs, its fishing communities, seafood processors and the Bay itself a federal disaster area, as if a hurricane had blown through the Bay and destroyed the coastal communities and seafood industry. A failed fishery is one facing what biologists call a complete stock collapse, in this case a seventy percent decline in the adult population of blue crabs, especially female crabs. In short, the Chesapeake's blue crabs are unable to reproduce themselves and they are in danger of disappearing.
3 Scott Harper, "Chesapeake's Blue Crab Fishery Declared a Disaster," Virginian-Pilot, 2008, available from Seafoodsource.com, http://www.seafoodsource.com/NST-3- 50109280/story .aspx?utm_ source=seafoodsource&utm_ medium=email&utm_ campaign=enewsletter&ocui d=NDUIODE3NA%3D%3D-Grp2t9Mew6E%3D, (accessed 24 September 2008). 3
The reason for this failure was not the weather.4 Government officials and scientists with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation named pollution as one of the causes for the collapse, acknowledging that the twenty-eight year effort to improve the water quality of the Chesapeake and restore its ecosystems under the Chesapeake Bay Commission has failed. 5 They also stated that predators, such as rockfish and bluefish, had increased in the Chesapeake and feasted on juvenile blue crabs. However, the government-and most urban residents of the region-put the blame primarily on the Bay's watermen
(fishermen) for overfishing. By their measure, the stock collapse is the result of the
"tragedy of the commons"-the Bay and its blue crabs are common property not privately owned like land or cattle and therefore overharvesting is inevitable. 6 This model asserts that fishermen will seek to maximize their profits by competing with each other to catch as many crabs as possible today in order to prevent someone else catching them tomorrow. In this competitive atmosphere, the harvest increases for a time, along with the number of watermen catching crabs, until harvests decrease and the crabs get smaller in size signaling overexploitation. Watermen respond to this decreased
4 The weather has been a factor in stock fluctuations over the years, including hurricanes, droughts, and heavy winter freezes.
5 Data on the causes are outlined in the Foundation's report, but see Tyler Whitley, "Report: Pollution, Overfishing Devastate Chesapeake Blue Crab Fishery," Richmond Times Dispatch, 2008, available from Seafoodsource.com, http://www.seafoodsource.com/NST-3- 50163331/story .aspx?utm_ source=seafoodsource&utm_ medium=email&utm_ campaign=enewsletter&ocui d=NDUIODE3NA%3D%3D-Grp2t9Mew6E%3D&r=t, (accessed 1 January 2009).
6 The tragedy of the commons was first outlined by H.S. Gordon in 1954 and then popularized by Hardin in the late 1960s, see H. S. Gordon, "The Economic Theory ofa Common-Property Resource: the Fishery," The Journal ofPolitical Economy 62, no. 2 (1954); Garrett Hardin, "The Tragedy of the Commons," in Green Planet Blues: Environmental Politics.from Stockholm to Rio, ed. Ken Conca and GeoffDabelko (Boulder: Westview Press, 2004[1968]). 4 productivity by increasing the time spent on the Bay to catch crabs, as well as the amount of gear used. In other words, they spend more effort to catch the same amount of crabs.
Profits are sustained for a time, but in the end profits decrease as the crab population become so depleted that it can no longer sustainably reproduce itself, like in the
Chesapeake.
The tragedy of the commons paradigm has dominated fisheries management since the 1950s, but this explanation begins and ends with watermen and a strictly economic understanding of their behavior. Is the economic rationality of fishermen sufficient to explain what happened to the Bay's blue crabs? I do not think so. The problem with the tragedy of the commons is that it views blue crabs as simply a natural resource, not a culturally and politically meaningful food, such as a Maryland crab cake. From this perspective, fisheries are divorced from their seafood products and the role of the food industry in economic growth strategies for states, regions, and nations. I am not saying that overfishing has not occurred on the Chesapeake. Rather, I do not think that the tragedy of the commons explains how or why Maryland crab cakes became the fourth most popular appetizer on restaurant menus in the United States in 1999. 7 Or why
Chesapeake crabmeat companies began to close years before the stock collapse. These contradictions indicate that there is more to the story of the Bay's blue crabs, and that it is taking place beyond the purview of watermen. As my dissertation will show, I believe this story starts with the changing meaning of Mary land crab cakes from a regional food
7 A.C. Neilson Company, "Top Rated Appetizers," American Restaurant 2002. 5 to a standardized, mass produced commodity that still represents Chesapeake heritage. 8
But how are these contradictions and transformations possible; how do you standardize
"the taste of tradition"? The best place to get a glimpse of this story is in Boston, at the
Boston Seafood Show.
One Big Kitchen
Riding the escalator down onto the floor of the Boston Convention Center my
senses are overwhelmed by the scope of the Boston Seafood Show and the displays of
seafood (See Figure 1). A maze of sales booths stretches across the convention center floor creating streets and avenues lined with over two hundred and fifty booths occupied by seafood companies from all over the world. 9 The companies attract potential buyers with colorful displays of fresh seafood expertly arranged and free samples ranging from the familiar grilled ginger salmon and coconut shrimp to the exotic panko breaded and fried skate wing and raw sea urchin. The bounty on display conveys a sense of abundance and a fresh-off-the-boat appearance as it represents a map of the world where seafood has traveled from New England, China, Thailand, or Chile to Boston.
8 I define commodity in Marxist terms as anything for sale on the market, whether sold as a branded good or not. However, as other anthropologists have done, I recognize commoditization as a symbolic and historical process. Commodities then have symbolic meaning and histories, or social lives, and acquire or shed meanings, identities, and implied qualities over time and space. See Arjun Appadurai, "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value," in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Igor Kopytoff, "The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process," in The Social life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
9 Exhibitors at the Boston Seafood Show include state export promotion representatives and companies from developing countries, especially Asia and Latin America. 6
Figure 1. Birds-eye view of the 2007 Boston Seafood Show. Source: Photos by the author.
The trade show and the global seafood industry seem to tell a success story of free trade, or neoliberal economic development. As proponents of neoliberalism tell it, free trade and competition in self-regulated markets creates economic growth because markets best determine the allocation of limited resources, such as fish, by pricing them high enough to prevent overexploitation or by finding substitutes. 1° For markets to work properly states must not interfere in them. Thus culture and politics are removed from the market and profit and productivity become ethical values guiding human activity. As governments deregulate, trim budgets, and commodify resources they allow the market to work in the best interest of consumers, producers, nations, and even the environment. By economic indicators, this has been true for the global seafood industry. According to the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the industry employed over 200 million people in 2006, and produced and traded almost 160 million tons offish, mollusks,
10 Proponents include many of the executives at the Boston Seafood Show, as well as policy makers, but for academic sources see Julian Simon, The Ultimate Resource II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997); Richard Stroup, Eco-nomics: What Everyone Should Know about Economics and the Environment (Washington DC: Cato Institute, 2003). These ideas are also understood as market environmentalism. 7 crustaceans and other marine products around the world. 11 Aquaculture (farmed fish) was worth $86 billion dollars and supplied forty-two percent of the seafood traded in the global market with the remaining fifty-eight percent coming from capture fisheries (wild caught fisheries) like blue crabs. Developing countries supplied eighty-two percent of this seafood, and, in fact, eighty percent of all the seafood consumed by Americans today is imported primarily from developing countries.
For developing countries, seafood represents a "non-traditional commodity"
(NTC) and path toward economic growth through high-value food exports. As prices for traditional (i.e. colonial) export commodities such as tropical fruits, sugar, rice, coffee, and cocoa began to decline in the 1980s, the World Bank encouraged developing countries to switch to NTC production.12 NTCs are foods raised and exported for their high market value in the United States, Europe and other developed countries, typically fresh or frozen foods, such as seafood, vegetables and fruit not normally grown or eaten in the developing country. By the 1990s, NTCs became the primary method of restructuring agriculture under the Bank's structural adjustment programs (SAPs), which required countries to re-orient their economies and social policies toward export-led growth by privatizing state-owned enterprises, liberalizing foreign investment laws, and
11 Data here is from Taras Grescoe, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood (New York: Bloomsbury, 2008); UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Fisheries Statistics Programme (Fisheries and Aquaculture Department, 2006): available from http://www.fao.org/fishery/statistics/programme/3,l,1(accessed3 February 2008).
12 Peter Little and Catherine Dolan, "Nontraditional Commodities and Structural Adjustment in Africa," in The Anthropology ofDevelopment and Globalization: from Classical Political Economy to Neoliberalism, ed. Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005 [2000]). 8 reducing state budgets. In economic terms, developing countries had to remove the structural impediments preventing markets and entrepreneurs from fully functioning.
Shoppers in the United States are probably more familiar with NTCs as grapes from Chile, but the fruit and vegetable trade in NTCs has been relatively small in comparison to seafood, especially shrimp. 13 The joint reclassification of these foods by governments, the World Bank, and the food industry changed not only the economic value of these foods but also their symbolic and political content. 14 NTCs became mechanisms for liberalizing trade and expanding an industrial, global food system that catered to the fragmented mass markets and gentrified tastes of consumers in developed countries. In other words, the meaning of the foods changed.
Fragmented markets and the gentrification of taste hint at the other part of the neoliberal success story: granting freedom to citizens through consumer choice and the creation of new lifestyles. The foods we consume and the places where we eat have always been a way to construct identity, but beginning in the 1980s, restaurants and the gentrification of taste became sites for economic redevelopment in the United States.
Redeveloping urban areas equated to opening restaurant chains and competition based on the differentiation of restaurant experiences and the foods they served. As mass markets fragmented to cater to different taste cultures, regional foods landed on menus because
13 Based on FAQ data and Steven Jaffee and P. Gordon, Exporting High Value Food Commodities: Success Stories.from Developing Countries (Washington DC: World Bank, 1993), Discussion Paper 198; UN Food and Agriculture Organization, Fisheries Statistics Programme (accessed
14 Little and Dolan, "Nontraditional Commodities and Structural Adjustment in Africa." 9 they add value through symbolic and nostalgic connections to a distinctive place and its cultural heritage.
As the only wild caught item on the menu, diners imagine seafood coming from fishermen and local fishing communities steeped in tradition, the last places and people untouched by the corporate food industry. However, our dominant American "foodview" is not shaped by taste or place, but around ideas of consistency, abundance, accessibility, and branding-an industrial understanding of food dominated by our ability to purchase a commodity whenever and where ever we wish. 15 These food values began to transform regional seafood dishes into what Warren Belasco calls "authenticity niches"-regional fare co-opted into the mass market that retains a connection to local identity and places by suggesting a "smattering of spice, irregularity, and eccentricity, of real people and places, of old fashioned honest labor and honest materials-an appearance of food lower down the food chain" than it actually is. 16 These foods presented an image of authenticity and locality that reaffirmed the neoliberal ideal of consumer sovereignty as lifestyle choice.
By the end of the 1980s, Americans had suddenly acquired a taste for fish and seafood consumption increased seventy percent, becoming the culinary trend of the late
15 Amy Trubek, The Taste ofPlace: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
16Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007), 232. Belasco uses Buffalo wings and Cajun shrimp as examples. 10 twentieth century.17 In this way, our authenticity niches have created "one big kitchen" in which restaurants have benefitted enormously.18 By value, sixty-eight percent of the
seafood eaten in the United States is ordered in restaurants, and since the 1980s seafood restaurants have been the fastest growing sector of the restaurant industry, expanding into regional and national chains. 19 Under neoliberalism, the world's oceans and seas seem to provide an inexhaustible all-you-can-eat buffet available any time of the year for our dining pleasure.
However, while neoliberalism's success in supplying mass marketed culinary trends is on display in Boston, the condition of the world's fish stocks is not. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s as different fish species became fashionable their trendiness was followed by stock collapse. For example, in 1976 Julia Child filleted and sauteed a monkfish on her television show, which, at the time, was considered a "trash fish" of little value. However, ten years later monkfish was a luxury food served in restaurants while the fishery collapsed.2° Chef Paul Prudhomme's blackened redfish craze put red drum in jeopardy by the late 1980s and the global taste trend of sushi has brought bluefin
17U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, US. Annual per Capita Consumption of Commercial Fish and Shellfish, 1910- 2005 (Silver Spring, MD: 2005): available from www.st.nmfs.gov/stl/fus/fus05/08_perita2005.pdf (accessed 1June2006)
18 Calvin Trillin quoted in Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 231.
19 Grescoe, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood.
20 Weber describes this process in Michael Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy (Washington DC: Island Press, 2002). 11 tuna to the brink of extinction. 21 Many of the booths in Boston are taking orders for these and other species considered severely depleted by the Food and Agriculture Organization
(F AO). Currently seventy percent of all fish stocks around the world are in danger of collapse and global fish stocks are projected to fully collapse (extinction) by 2048.22
The condition of the world's fish stocks points toward the failure of neoliberal arguments that markets will protect and even increase natural resources through higher prices or substitute inputs. On the one hand, neoliberalism ignores the contradictions inherent in defining development as export-led growth, whether through non-traditional commodities or increased consumption cloaked as lifestyle choices. Social scientists, on the other hand, have been so focused on fishermen and the tragedy of the commons that we have ignored how fish circulate as seafood in food cultures and capitalist economies.
As a result, social scientists have overlooked the new forms of commodities and industrialization openly on display at the Boston Seafood Show-quality and seafood safety.
New Commodities: Quality and Safety
Walking through the Boston show, I recognize a familiar booth and poster announcing "The Story of Crab: the Maryland Crab Cake." I notice that Alice is in the
21 Grescoe, Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood; Sasha Issenberg, The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (New York: Gotham Books, 2007).
22 UN Food and Agriculture Organization, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006 (Fisheries and Aquaculture Department 2006): available from http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/A0699e/A0699e00.htm (accessed 1December2007); Boris Worm and others, "Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services," Science 314 (2006). 12 booth talking to potential customers from Australia, the United States, and Britain. I first met Alice in 2006, when she walked up to me and in perfect mid-western English said
"Hi, call me Alice" even though she is Thai and the name on her business card read
Wasipatii Uyawananpong. Alice is Vice-President of Marketing for Pakfoods, the Thai multinational seafood company that owns the booth and has made Maryland crab cakes since 1997 for restaurants like Red Lobster. According to Alice, the name "Maryland" is now a global sign of quality:
Oh, everybody knows a Maryland crab cake! We have been going to the Boston Seafood Show for over ten years, and our corporate chefs have built up our taste knowledge that way. The name 'Maryland' is a sign of quality and always the most expensive crab cake in a company's product line. 23
Alice has never been to Maryland, but she knows the name adds value to her product through quality. For crab cakes this means the cultural and symbolic elements, as well as the physical attributes, that link crab cakes to "Maryland" and to Chesapeake heritage through the Bay's crabmeat industry. But, Pakfoods' crab cakes are made from a different species of wild caught blue crab than the one found in the Chesapeake and today is one of Thailand's most successful NTCs with an increased value of eighty percent between 1996 and 2003.24 Thailand's NTCs compete in global markets by successfully standardizing and commodifying a complex set of symbolic and material attributes that make a crab cake a "Maryland" crab cake--an authenticity niche.
23 Alice Oui, Vice-President of Marketing, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly F eltault, 17 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
24 Douglas Lipton, "Competing with Imported Crabmeat," Atlantic Fisheries Technology Conference, Atlantic Beach, NC, 11November1999, Maryland Sea Grant Extension, University of Maryland (Maryland Sea Grant Extension, University of Maryland, 1999). 13
Although there are twenty-seven companies offering Maryland crab cakes and crabmeat at the Boston Seafood Show, only one is credited with creating this rnarket
Phillips Foods. In the seafood industry, Phillips Foods has garnered a reputation as an entrepreneur and innovator by providing restaurant chains with an industrialized and standardized commodity that still invokes Chesapeake watermen and traditional culture.
This is because Phillips is also known as a chain of family-owned restaurants, Phillips
Seafood Restaurants, originally from Maryland and famous for their crab cakes and four generations of Chesapeake watermen. Steeped in Chesapeake heritage, Phillips became the destination for tourists as the anchor restaurant for Baltimore's Inner Harbor redevelopment project, and today operates over eight restaurants along the east coast.
Even though Phillips markets themselves and their crab cakes as the "taste of tradition of the Chesapeake," since 1992 the company has made their crab cakes with imported crabmeat produced in Phillips' own factories in Southeast Asia, including Thailand.
However, in Boston, Phillips is not emphasizing their connection to Maryland, but rather seafood safety. Whether in Boston, or elsewhere, conversations with anyone in the seafood industry inevitably tum to pathogens, environmental toxins, in-house laboratories, traceability, and third party audits. A poster hanging over the head of
Phillips' corporate chef making crab cakes urges buyers to "Taste the Science of
Quality," which can be summed up in one acronym: HACCP, the Hazard Analysis and
Critical Control Points food safety system. As the global seafood safety system endorsed by the World Trade Organization (WTO), HACCP has brought an industrial set of standards to large and small-scale fisheries and processors in order to make globally 14 sourced seafood interchangeable across national regulatory systems and highly localized production networks.
Phillips, like all the other exhibitors, is eager to assure potential buyers that their
HACCP program controls seafood hazards better than their competitors, making their products safer. To accomplish this, a continuously running video traces a can of crabmeat from the chef back to the dock in Thailand. Along the way, we stop in the company's factories to see how workers monitor and control the crabmeat through temperature checks and microbiological tests. Eventually we come to the fishing village where Phillips buys crabs, but only from state-approved fishermen who also meet company standards. The sales team emphasizes that every can is traceable back to the specific fishermen, worker, and environment where it was produced because "full traceability means accountability and peace of mind for you and your customers."
Companies and states have used HACCP to differentiate and market products through the people and places where "safe" seafood is produced.
Fish have long been part of international trade, whether to feed Christians on
Fridays, or soldiers, slaves and indentured labor for empires.25 These trade networks have always mobilized a variety of public and private actors across great distances and food cultures. 26 Yet, policy makers, marine biologists, and social scientists understand
25 For more on the historical trade of seafood, see John Butcher, The Closing of the Frontier: a History ofthe Marine Fisheries ofSoutheast Asia c 1850 to 2000 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 2004); Brian Fagan, Fish on Friday: Feasting, Fasting and the Discovery of the New World (New York: Basic Books, 2006); Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography ofthe Fish that Changed the World (New York: Penguin, 1997).
26John Wilkinson, "Fish: A Global Value Chain Driven onto the Rocks," Sociologia Ruralis 46, no. 2 (2006). 15 the pressures facing fisheries only in terms of their position as a natural resource, which has precluded an examination of fish as seafood. 27 My experience in Boston draws attention to the ways that seafood corporations and states are creating value and accumulating capital closer to the point of consumption while also industrializing regional seafood cuisines for export-led economic growth. This pattern of accumulation and industrialization raises questions about the efficacy of the tragedy of the commons in explaining fisheries collapse and demands that we pay greater attention to fish as a culturally and politically meaningful food connected to an industrial food system.
To that end, my dissertation explains how Maryland crab cakes became an authenticity niche. I explore how corporations and states used quality and safety to reshape the meaning of Maryland crab cakes from the taste of tradition to a standardized, mass marketed food. By examining both production and the creation of markets
(consumption), I build on current research that argues free trade and self-regulated markets are premised on accumulation by dispossession-the appropriation of natural and cultural resources as assets for capital accumulation and their transfer to private interests by the state.28 I argue that transforming the Maryland crab cake into an authenticity niche was a form of accumulation by dispossession through the processes and ideologies used by states and corporations to capture, remake, and revalue natural
27 Environmental anthropologists have primarily examined how fishermen manage risk and adapt to change, employing cognitive models to frame fishermen's actions as part of equilibriwn and adaptability strategies among fishing communities rather than locate fishermen and their catch within political economic processes facilitating the change. See for example, Joanna Endter-Wada and Sean P. Keenan, "Adaptations by Long-Term Commercial Fishing Families in the California Bight: Coping with Changing Coastal Ecological and Social Systems," Human Organization 64, no. 3 (2005).
28 David Harvey, A BriefHistory ofNeoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 16 and cultural resources for the global market. Thus, my research highlights not only how states and firms collaborate to commodify culture and nature, but how such processes in two different locations become connected to create a global industry integral to neoliberal economic growth strategies in Maryland and Thailand. The next section reviews the existing literature on NTC and alternative food networks as a starting point to build a theory for standardizing and mass marketing regional seafood cuisines based on quality and safety. I follow this with an outline of the chapters.
Theorizing Authenticity Niches
Authenticity niche foods and the forms of capital accumulation connected to them raise questions about the limitations of the current literature which artificially divides foods as either global or local. Instead, we need to uncover three processes at work: 1) what are the processes by which specific attributes of nature and culture are materially and ideologically positioned as the basis of economic growth strategies in the Chesapeake and Thailand?; 2) What does it mean to then connect these strategies and how are people, places and environments remade for the global market through socio-political notions of food quality, or authenticity, and seafood safety?; and 3) How do these productions co constitute and embed global crabmeat networks in new social and environmental relationships and what kinds of relations are being embedded? In this section, I first outline the bifurcated agro-food studies literature and the strengths and weaknesses of this work in relation to my study. Then I suggest three ways to bridge this dichotomous system and build a theory of authenticity niches that addresses the broader goal. I discuss convention theory as the conceptual link between the two paradigms of agro-food studies 17 and outline socionature as a platform for understanding the role of nature in commodity chains, and also in economic development.29 From here, I connect this literature to discussions among political ecologists on accumulation by dispossession as a way to conceptually connect the processes taking place in Maryland and Thailand.
Alternative and Global Food Networks
Two primary approaches to studying contemporary food provisioning systems have developed since 1994: global and alternative food networks. Both are based on
Friedland's early commodity chain analysis, later expanded by Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, which began as way to examine the political economy of industrially produced foods. 30
This approach focuses on a single crop (lettuce, green beans), and attempts to trace it from farm to fork, identifying the actors, values, technology, and power relationships embodied in the chain. However, early efforts assumed that internationalization and restructuring in the food industry paralleled restructuring for heavily manufactured goods
(cars, clothes). According to this literature, the food industry was moving from centralized vertical integration toward decentralized subcontracting and extending seasons by sourcing from tropical countries, taking advantage of cheap, feminized
29 Throughout this dissertation I will use economic development interchangeably with economic growth as they are in the Thai word kanpattana, which means development and implies modernization and the dominant discourse of development as economic-led growth. For a discussion of the word "development" in the Southeast Asian context, see Jonathan Rigg, Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape ofModernization and Development (London: Routledge, 1997). 3°Friedland's early studies focused on US agricultural systems and his commodity systems analysis was later modified by Gereffi and Korzeniewicz for studying global manufacturing systems. William Friedland, "Commodity Systems Analysis: an Approach to the Sociology of Agriculture," Research in Rural Sociology and Development 1 (1984); Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, "Introduction: Global Commodity Chains," in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, ed. Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz (Westport CT: Praeger, 1994). 18 labor. 31 Although I have adopted the commodity chains approach, I start from two works that challenged this assumption.
First, Little and Watts' volume Living Under Contract showed that rather than a new phenomenon of globalization, subcontracting in agriculture had historical roots, particularly in the United States, yet still led to vertical integration through decentralized production.32 Furthermore, the studies found that while the subcontract provided a structural commonality, the processes and shape of globalization were place-specific and historically contingent due to the particular institutional and organizational configurations of companies and states. In the second work, Goodman and Watts argued that the early agro-food studies literature had ignored the role of nature in shaping agro-restructuring and had assumed that market exchanges and competition in the food industry were still based on cost and price criteria (as we have seen, the Boston seafood show suggests otherwise).33 Instead, Goodman and Watts asserted that agrarian restructuring and competition were based increasingly on quality and safety criteria, which required a better understanding of the role of nature and the biophysical aspects of food in shaping the globalization of the food system through new forms of competition, commodification,
31 The best example of this is Laura Raynolds, "Institutionalizing Flexibility: a Comparative Analysis ofFordist and Post Fordist Models of Third World Agro Export Production," in Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, ed. Gary Gereffi (Westport: Praeger Press, 1994).
32 Peter Little and Michael Watts, "Introduction," in Living under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Peter Little and Michael Watts (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
33 David Goodman and Michael J. Watts, "Reconfiguring the Rural or Fording the Divide?: Capitalist Restructuring and the Global Agro-food System," Journal of Peasant Studies 22, no. 1 (1994). 19 and privatization. 34 Adding to these critiques, I argue that labor in the food processing industry has been feminized for a long time in the United States and other developed countries and therefore we must also question the feminization of labor thesis in relation to the food industry.35 Following these critiques, agro-food studies essentially split into two camps by the end of the 1990s with one studying local, or alternative, food systems primarily in Europe and the other examining NTC production in developing countries.
Alternative Food Networks
What I am calling alternative food networks literature actually falls under several different headings: post-productivism; local food systems; alternative or short food chains; and alternative agro-food networks. At its core, this work has examined the relocalization of food production, primarily in Europe, in regions peripheral to globalization or where capital has withdrawn from the area. The work frames the increasing demand for locally produced, regional foods as the emergence of a new rural economic development model resulting from consumers' food fears and a desire for authentic food that is traceable back to its point of origin. 36 The bulk of this work argues
34 Ibid. Goodman later raised this issue more explicitly, see David Goodman, "World-Scale Processes and Agro-Food Systems: Critique and Research Needs," Review ofInternational Political Economy 4, no. 4 (1997). That same year Fine echoed this idea, arguing that different foods created different systems of provisioning due to their dependence on organic and cultural properties throughout the production and consumption process, see Ben Fine, "Towards a Political Economy of Food," Review of International Political Economy 1, no. 3 (1994).
35 See for example, Kelly Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers," Anthropology of Work Review 26, no. 1 (2005); Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987).
36 For a discussion, see Elizabeth Barham, "Translating Terroir: the Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling," Journal ofRural Studies 19, no. 1 (2003). See for example Kevin Morgan, Terry 20 that shorter commodity chains, in which the consumer buys directly (or as close as possible) from the farmer, can rework the power and knowledge relationships in food supply systems while also operating as a resistance strategy to industrial food production.37 All of this work ties food quality to specific places and methods of production through the concepts ofterroir, a turn to quality, and embeddedness.
Terroir is a specific foodview-a cultural way of valuing and understanding food-that links the taste and quality of food to "the soul of the producer" and the soil, topography, and climate natural environment of the food's place of origin.38 Food quality is therefore inherent in specific places through tastes and flavors of the environment, and the persistence of production practices. In Europe, these tastes, places, and production techniques are protected through labels of origin, or geographic indicators (GI) that add value to the products because, as Ilbery and Kneafsey argue, consumers place greater cultural and monetary value on foods they can associate with a region recognized for older, traditional methods of production yielding a higher price to farmers. 39 Barham suggests that geographic indicators make place and foods a form of collective property
Marsden, and Jonathan Murdoch, Worlds ofFood: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
37 See Robert Feagan, "The Place of Food: Mapping Out the 'Local' in Local Food Systems," Progress in Human Geography 31, no. 1 (2007).
38 Kolleen Guy, "Rituals of Pleasure in the Land of Treasures: Wine Consumption and the Making of French Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century," in Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies, ed. Warren Belasco and Philip Scranton (New York: Routledge, 2002), 36; Trubek, The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.
39 B. Ilbery and M. Kneafsey, "Registering Regional Specialty Foodstuffs in the United Kingdom: the Case of PDOs and PGls," Area 32, no. 3 (2000). 21 and a platform for negotiating the use of local resources. 40 Trubek suggests that
American terroir is more entrepreneurial than its European counterpart due to America's different food history and disconnection from long-standing traditional production methods-we are more willing to experiment with taste and place.41
The tum to quality literature argues more strongly for commodifying places and production methods as a way to protect them, again through labels of origin. However, this literature also recognizes that labels such as organic and fair trade include longer commodity chains, yet provide consumers with information about the product's origin or its production methods. 42 Much of this literature suggests that certification labels re- embed the price and consumers' decisions in broader spheres of sociocultural and environmental considerations, equating local foods with environmentally and socially responsible food production. For example, Marsden et. al argue that shorter food supply chains add value through locality and embeddedness, which makes the food more scarce.43 Goodman more specifically suggests that face-to-face relations of trust, tradition and place support differentiated, localized and ecological products of higher value.
Together, these bodies of literature merge ideas of authenticity, regional cuisine, and sustainable environments through GI labels as a way to protect local foods, industries, and landscapes. As Ilbery and Kneafsey point out, the search for authenticity
40 Barham, "Translating Terroir: the Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling."
41 Trubek, The Taste ofPlace: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.
42 Terry Marsden, Jo Banks, and Gillian Bristow, "Food Supply Chain Approaches: Exploring their Role in Rural Development," Sociologia Ruralis 40, no. 4 (2000).
43 Ibid. 22 and "quality" has taken on greater resonance with the perceived loss of rural traditions and sense of place under globalization (modernization) and the restructuring of European
Union agricultural policies.44 Several case studies suggest that these shorter commodity chains help preserve rural landscapes, but also add value to them because rurality has become a commodity unto itself.45 According to the literature, value is also added through Polanyi and Granovetter's concept of embeddedness because alternative networks are constrained through ongoing personal relationships that generate trust.46
However, this literature's emphasis on authenticity, embeddedness, and place has raised several criticisms.
Although the alternative networks scholarship sought to examine the revaluing of rural landscapes as part of its research agenda, very little of this work has actually engaged these issues. Instead, critics have accurately argued that in linking food quality to place and ideas of tradition, these studies valorize local resources and cultural identities while conflating place and community.47 As Watts et. al point out, this makes
44 B. Ilbery and M. Kneafsey, "Product and Place: Promoting Quality Products and Services in the Lagging Rural Regions of the European Union," European Urban and Regional Studies 5 (1998); Ilbery and Kneafsey, "Registering Regional Specialty Foodstuffs in the United Kingdom: the Case of PDOs and PGis."
45 Marsden, Banks, and Bristow, "Food Supply Chain Approaches: Exploring their Role in Rural Development."; Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch, Worlds ofFood: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain.
46 Polanyi and Granovetter argue that all economic activities are submerged (embedded) in social, political, and environmental relations that prevent the over exploitation of natural resources and labor. See Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins ofOur Time (Boston: Beacon Press, [1944] 2001); Richard Swedberg and Mark Granovetter, "Introduction," in The Sociology of Economic Life, ed. Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 9.
47 Feagan, "The Place of Food: Mapping Out the 'Local' in Local Food Systems."; D.C.H. Watts, B. Ilbery, and D. Maye, "Making Reconnections in Agro-food Geography: Alternative Systems of Food Provision," Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 1 (2005). 23 local producers dependent on one product, but I would add that it also essentializes a regional identity embodied in that food, a point that I will return to later.48 For now,
Parrot et. al show that GI labels are predominantly used in southern Europe and their use has led to categorizing southern EU countries as "backward" because these labels are viewed as an obstacle to progress defined as free trade and industrial agriculture-a form of differentiation not addressed in the literature. 49 As Winter and others assert, concepts such as "local," "authentic," and "tradition" are socially constructed through power relations and invented as part of broader state-led economic growth efforts, therefore a food's quality, particularly taste, and thus the ways that it is measured and signified are subject to change.50
Indeed, the underlying, and often not discussed, trend in much of this scholarship is the connection between alternative foods, tourism, and the production of regional or state identity. Trubek and Guy have demonstrated how French AOC labels (the original
GI label) were established by the state as part of defming and differentiating French
48 Watts, Ilbery, and Maye, "Making Reconnections in Agro-food Geography: Alternative Systems of Food Provision."
49 Nicholas Parrott, Natasha Wilson, and Jonathan Murdoch, "Spatializing Quality: Regional Protection and the Alternative Geography of Food," European Urban and Regional Studies 9, no. 3 (2002).
5° Feagan, "The Place of Food: Mapping Out the 'Local' in Local Food Systems."; Peter Gibbon and Stefano Ponte, Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005); Watts. Ilbery. and Maye. "Making Reconnections in Agro-food Geography: Alternative Systems of Food Provision."; Michael Winter, "Embeddedness, the New Food Economy and Defensive Localism," Journal ofRural Studies 19 (2003). Overall, there is a great deal ofliterature on sense of place and the invention of tradition, see for example Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, "Introduction: Inventing Tradition," in The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Lucy Lippard, The Lure ofthe Local: Sense ofPlace in a Multicentered Society (New York: The New Press, 1997). 24 national identity at the tum of the twentieth century.51 Trubek chronicles how the French state and car companies employed French food writers to expand auto tourism by encouraging the middle class to experience their French peasant roots and taste the countryside. In celebrating gastronomy, tourism, and place the state established products with histories, authenticity, heritage, and aesthetic value that came to represent regional identities. The absence of any critical understanding of tourism and state identity in this literature is particularly problematic in the United States where GI labels are not sanctioned and protected by federal law. This is particularly apparent in Trubek's work, which completely overlooks this regulatory issue and assumes that municipal states and localities can prevent the cooptation of invented traditions, regional identity and local foods.
A related criticism centers on the issue of embeddedness and the idea that local foods preclude exploitation or relations of power. As Winter suggests this scholarship uses embeddedness as a euphemism for market relations based on trust and close personal ties linked to place, ignoring how differentiation based on quality furthers the segmentation of markets prevalent in the industrial food system. 52 He argues, instead, that embeddedness also has to do with the meanings these social relations hold, and thus greater importance should be given to identifying the degrees and qualities of trust, whether local or global. Similarly, Bair asserts that in rooting Polanyi and Granovetter's
51 AOC stands for Appellation d'origine controlee and covers French wine, cheese, butter, honey and poultry. In other European countries PDO and PDI labels are used. See Guy, "Rituals of Pleasure in the Land of Treasures: Wine Consumption and the Making of French Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century."; Trubek, The Taste ofPlace: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.
52 Winter, "Embeddedness, the New Food Economy and Defensive Localism." 25 concepts in micro-social relations this literature has created a myopic view with little to say about the creation of markets or the internationalization of networks. 53 More to the point, Mansfield has demonstrated that treating quality as inherent to place and a specific environment overlooks the ways that quality and safety are negotiated and constructed through the social and material relationships shaping industrialized global networks .54
While the alternative food networks scholarship points toward the possible ways that authenticity is crafted and valued as food quality, the weaknesses in the literature suggest that the analysis has not gone far enough. I now tum to the global food network literature.
Global Food Networks
Like the alternative networks literature, what I am calling the global food networks literature also has several monikers: NTC studies, global value chains, and agro-restructuring. Scholars in this field focus exclusively on the restructuring of agricultural production in developing countries toward high value foods and the consequences of this export-led economic growth.55 This body ofliterature collectively argues that quality, new forms of global regulation, and consumption concerns are
53 Jennifer Bair, "Analysing Economic Organization: Embedded Networks and Global Chains Compared," Economy and Society 37, no. 3 (2008); Martin Hess, "'Spatial' Relationships? Towards a Reconceptualization ofEmbeddedness," Progress in Human Geography 28, no. 2 (2004).
54 Becky Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry," Economic Geography 79, no. 1 (2003).
55 See for example Catherine Dolan, "Tesco is King: Gender and Labor Dynamics in Horticultural Exporting, Meru District, Kenya" (PhD Dissertation, State University of New York, 1997); David Goodman and Michael Watts, eds., Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring (New York: Routledge, 1997). 26 reshaping global food networks, and the social relations of production in developing countries. Intrinsic to this argument is the recognition that economic liberalization,
SAPs, and regulatory harmonization through the WTO have not eliminated variation in local production systems or even mass production despite decentralized, global networks. 56 Whereas the alternative networks literature defined food quality as inherent in specific places and production practices, this body of work has defined quality primarily as a cultural construction that values certain physical attributes and biophysical elements of food (freshness, blemishes, size) and the ability of retailers to trace foods back to their place of origin. Overall, the message is that the borders between alternative and global food networks are becoming more porous as place and provenance insinuate themselves into the global industrial food system, leaving open the possibility of authenticity niche foods. 57
Research on NTCs has focused primarily on fruits and vegetables, with a growing body of work on the industrialization of organic and fair trade foods. This work has explored how private corporate and national-global standards shape global food networks and facilitate market access, allowing full interchangeability of foods between decentralized producers while creating social and environmental inequalities.58 For
56 This is a prominent theme rooted in the biophysical aspects of food networks see Fine, "Towards a Political Economy of Food."; Susanne Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Goodman and Watts, eds., Globalising Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring.
57 Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch, Worlds ofFood: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain.
58 Benoit Daviron and Stefano Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise ofDevelopment (London: Zed Books, 2005). 27 example, Friedland argued that foods produced under decentralized production systems still maintained standardized uniformity regardless of the food's origins through inspection systems and the quality criteria required by retailers and manufacturers. 59
Thus, the creation of niche markets in developed countries did not mean an end to mass production, but rather expansion with differentiation-the mass standardization of niche foods. Marsden asserted that agrarian restructuring represented new patterns of food governance at both the global and national scales in which power rested in the control and construction of value through standards, labels, and certifications which are deeply intertwined with social and political concepts of nature that play out at local, national, and global scales.60 Busch and Tanaka added to this by suggesting that quality and safety standards also monitor and control the behavior of people in the networks, and therefore are instruments used to "subject people and nature to rites of passage in order to assess their goodness." 61 Building on these ideas, Friedberg demonstrated that the power to define and demand goodness in food introduced new forms of domination and vulnerability into post-colonial green bean commodity networks as risk was re-allocated to producers in Zambia and Burkina Faso.62
59 William Friedland, "Fordism, Post-Fordism, Mass Production, and Flexible Specialization: Whatever is Going On in the World," Paper presented at the seminar Restructuring the Food System: Global Processes and National Responses, Center for Rural Research, University of Trondheim, Norway, May, 1994.
60 Terry Marsden, "Food Matters and the Matter of Food: Towards a New Food Governance?," Sociologia Ruralis 40, no. 1 (2000).
61 Keiko Tanaka and Lawrence Busch, "Standardization as a Means for Globalizing a Commodity: the Case of Rapeseed in China," Rural Sociology 68, no. 1 (2003): 40.
62 Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age. 28
Collectively, the alternative food networks literature argues that global food networks produce standardized placeless food that is disembedded from local social and ecological relations of trust.63 However, Freidberg and others have demonstrated that social relations in global networks are governed by different sets of economic practices, measures of value, and cultural meanings of food and are therefore embedded in specific forms of trust and farming practices. 64 These studies show that trust is still important in global networks even though they are coordinated at a distance through corporate and state standards. As one of the few studies on seafood, Mansfield uses corporate quality standards to understand processes of globalization, demonstrating that different types of fish and their biophysical characteristics influence trade and investment patterns, shaping supply and demand. 65 Thus, definitions and standards for quality emerge from sociopolitical and material constructions based on the interactions between fish, their marine environments, production technologies and the cultural meaning of foods. In this way, quality and safety certification through global governance systems represent social and environmental power relations in the networks.66
Another body of work has challenged the alternative networks arguments regarding labeling as a resistant strategy to globalization by examining the
63 Feagan, "The Place of Food: Mapping Out the 'Local' in Local Food Systems."
64 Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age. See also Gibbon and Ponte, Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy.
65Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry."
66 Peter Dicken and others, "Chains and Networks, Territories and Scales: Towards a Relational Framework for Analysing the Global Economy," Global Networks I, no. 2 (2001); Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry." 29 industrialization and globalization of organic and fair trade foods. Raynolds and others have debated whether or not fair trade and organic coffee is producing the desired outcomes of higher incomes for developing country farmers, while Daviron and Ponte have argued that the upgrading requirements to meet the standards and lack of control over them has led to marginalization despite the social and environmental certification systems. 67 Much of this work begins to raise questions about not only the role of nature in the networks, but how our social and political conceptualizations of nature are used in shaping standards. Guthman shows how the ideological construction and institutionalization of the meaning of organic in the USDA standards facilitated the proliferation of agribusiness entrants into the organic food market and the adoption of questionably sustainable practices by "literally naturalizing a commodity group."68 In contrast, Mansfield demonstrated that organic certification could not be extended to wild caught seafood because certification depends on "making improvements to the land" and controlling the environment where food is produced-a level of control that could not be extended to the marine environment. 69
67 Daviron and Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise ofDevelopment; Gibbon and Ponte, Trading Down: Africa, Value Chains, and the Global Economy; Laura Raynolds, "Consumer/Producer Links in Fair Trade Coffee Networks," Sociologia Ruralis 42, no. 4 (2002); Laura Raynolds, Douglas Murray, and Andrew Heller, "Regulating Sustainability in the Coffee Sector: A Comparative Analysis of Third-Party Environmental and Social Certification Initiatives," Agriculture and Human Values 24, no. 2 (2007).
68 Julie Guthman, "Regulating Meaning, Appropriating Nature: The Codification of California Organic Agriculture," Antipode 30, no. 2 (1998): 137.
69 Becky Mansfield, "From Catfish to Organic Fish: Making Distinctions about Nature as Cultural Economic Practice," Geoforum 34 (2003). 30
These studies redefined global commodity chains from a strictly structural understanding to "a set of linked human activities and biophysical processes and risks"
(e.g. spoilage, gluts, and contaminants) that make global networks and trade dependent on "trust relationships and risk management strategies" codified in quality and safety standards.70 The resulting picture, as Friedberg asserts, is that moving food around the globe takes place in highly diverse commodity networks that link specific people, places, and environments and deal with laws, food standards, and cultural notions of quality in particular ways. 71 While I build on these efforts, there are several weaknesses that must be addressed.
Although commodity chain analysis portends to trace foods from production to consumption, the existing literature narrowly focuses on the farming (production) portions of the network. This production bias overlooks the symbolic meaning of the foods under study, particularly what Appadurai calls their "social life"-how foods acquire or shed meanings, identities, and implied qualities over time. 72 Cook and others have called for fully tracing a food commodity in this manner, but I push Cook's idea by asking when does production begin?73 According to the global food chains literature,
70 Susanne Freidberg, "On the Trail of the Global Green Bean: Methodological Considerations in Multi-Site Ethnography," Global Networks 1, no. 4 (2001): 354.
71 Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age, 9.
72 Appadurai. "Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value."
73 Ian Cook, "Geographies of Food: Following," Progress in Human Geography 30, no. 5 (2006); David Goodman, "Rethinking Food Production-Consumption: Integrative Perspectives," Sociologia Ruralis 42, no. 4 (2002); Marsden, Banks, and Bristow, "Food Supply Chain Approaches: Exploring their Role in Rural Development."; Terry Marsden and others, "Agricultural Geography and the Political Economy Approach: A Review," Economic Geography 72, no. 4 (1996). 31 production begins on the farm in developing countries. However, my research will show that for Maryland crab cakes production-cultural, political, and material-began in the
Chesapeake as part of redevelopment strategies built on the creation and marketing of a regional identity. In addition, the emphasis on farm-level relations has left markets under-theorized, which has been reinforced by the claims that the shift toward quality differentiated foods was consumer driven. 74 But Watts et. al assert that the turn to quality in the global food system was driven by large retailers defending market share, thus the goal of neoliberal food production is to create the appearance of choice and freedom for consumers. 75 By not exploring the entire network-whether the invention of tradition or the creation of markets-both bodies of scholarship have overlooked significant aspects of power and meaning in the networks.
Another problem rests in conceptualizing the standards themselves. Although
Guthman and Mansfield have broadly examined the politics of nature involved in setting standards, most studies have a tendency to take the standards themselves as a given, external variable. 76 Yet, Nestle, Salter, and others have shown that standards are not objective, value-free measurements created by science but rather setting standards is a
74 Hazel Barret and others, "Globalization and the Changing Networks of Food Supply: the Importation of Fresh Horticultural Produce from Kenya into the UK.," Transactions ofthe Institute of British Geographers 24, no. 2 (1999); Freidberg, French Beans and Food Scares: Culture and Commerce in an Anxious Age; Jaffee and Gordon, Exporting High Value Food Commodities: Success Stories.from Developing Countries.
75 Watts, Ilbery, and Maye, "Making Reconnections in Agro-food Geography: Alternative Systems of Food Provision."
76 See for example, Stefano Ponte, "Bans, Tests, and Alchemy: Food Safety Regulation and the Uganda Fish Export Industry," Agriculture and Human Values 24, no. 2 (2007). 32 highly political process conducive to neoliberal reforms. 77 Phillips has observed that in ignoring how standards are set scholars have left neoliberal food governance models
(such as HACCP) depoliticized. 78 My research fills this gap by examining the standard setting process at multiple scales as part of network construction that institutionalizes neoliberal forms of trust through traceability and accountability embedded in the standard's auditing and cost efficiency methods. As Power describes, the creation of an audit and accountability culture shaped the forms of management and governance championed by neoliberal restructuring starting in the 1980s. 79
At the root of these weaknesses is a limited conceptualization of nature in the networks, which has been understood either as the biophysical attributes of foods or the environmental characteristics of a place, in the case of alternative networks. Thus a more comprehensive conceptualization of nature is needed, as well as frameworks that allow for an understanding of how processes of tourism, food quality, and segmented mass markets come together. At their core, both bodies of literature assert that food production-consumption chains are embedded in social and environmental relationships through concepts of food quality that shaped the network. My contribution to these debates is in bridging these paradigms and pushing them in a new direction in order to understand the emergence of authenticity niche foods.
77 Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Liora Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards (Dordrecht Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).
78 Lynne Phillips, "Food and Globalization," Annual Review ofAnthropology 35 (2006).
79 Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 33
Seeing Past the Dichotomy
The alternative food networks and global commodity chains literature explore the two sides of authenticity niches-place-based authenticity and globalized, mass production-but never really reconcile these dichotomies to understand the transformation of a local food. To remove the dichotomy and provide a broader conceptualization of nature, I build on convention theory and socionature. In order to address the weaknesses I outlined above and understand how Maryland and Thailand became connected, I extend political ecology's use of accumulation by dispossession to food quality and safety standards, but also to the branding of place through heritage tourism and the creation of markets.
Convention Theory and Socionature
Convention theory recognizes that commodity production and distribution requires formal and informal rules and assurances to coordinate networks.80 Networks, then, are embedded in and operate through conventions defined as the practices, routines, rules, and norms that bind actors together through forms of trust. These conventions allocate value and labor at different points in the network, and not only qualify food for trade but also shape market access. Convention theory also recognizes both symbolic and material forms of quality and therefore provides a means to analyze how these are negotiated across cultures and through social and environmental relationships, and how
80 This theory was originally articulated by M. Storper and R. Salais, Worlds ofProduction (London: Harvard University Press, 1997). 34 they are embedded in institutional structures, different regulatory criteria, cultural expectations, technology, and the biophysical processes of food production. 81
There are five forms of quality conventions: market, public, civic, domestic, and industrial. Price is the primary evaluation and coordination point for goods produced under a market convention, which assumes there are no uncertainties or differences regarding quality. 82 Uncertainty over quality is solved through the four remaining conventions. Public conventions solve quality uncertainty through the recognition that consumers give to trademarks, brands, and packaging while civic conventions create product identity and value by signaling social or environmental benefits such as fair trade or Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) labeling. 83 In the domestic convention, quality is established through forms of trust embodied in long-term personal relationships between actors or the ability of goods to draw upon attachments to place and "traditional" modes of production as reflected in the alternative food networks literature. 84 In contrast,
81 My definition of convention theory is based on Barham, "Translating Terroir: the Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling."; Daviron and Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise ofDevelopment; Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch, Worlds of Food: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain; Jonathan Murdoch, Terry Marsden, and Jo Banks, "Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector," Economic Geography 76, no. 2 (2000); Parrott, Wilson, and Murdoch, "Spatializing Quality: Regional Protection and the Alternative Geography of Food."; Stefano Ponte and Peter Gibbon, "Quality Standards, Conventions, and Governance of Global Value Chains," Economy and Society 34, no. 1 (2005).
82 Murdoch, Marsden, and Banks, "Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector."; Ponte and Gibbon, "Quality Standards, Conventions, and Governance of Global Value Chains."
83Murdoch, Marsden, and Banks, "Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector."
84 Daviron and Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise ofDevelopment; Murdoch, Marsden, and Banks, "Quality, Nature, and Embeddedness: Some Theoretical Considerations in the Context of the Food Sector."; Ponte and Gibbon, "Quality Standards, Conventions, and Governance of Global Value Chains." 35
industrial conventions rely on the actions of an external party (the state or other
organization) who determines the conventions through standards and enforces them through testing, inspection, and certification.85 For these foods, trust becomes
institutionalized in the standards and inspection systems as they arrange things into
classes with distinct values. 86 Thus, an industrial quality convention includes NTC, but
also organic certification systems and GI labels if they are regulated by the state, such as those discussed earlier in the alternative food networks literature. Convention theory exposes how power operates through the specific strategies that actors engage in to create, legitimize and maintain the characteristics of food, making quality the center of power relations.87 To date, convention theory has been used to reify the dichotomy outlined earlier between local and global foods with local foods following a domestic
convention and global foods following an industrial convention.88 Instead, I build on
convention theory by exploring how foods move from one convention to another in the production of authenticity niches and how this changes through the social life of the food.
A theoretical conceptualization of nature is central to convention theory, yet has remained peripheral to its discussion and use. In addition, theorizing authenticity niches
85 Daviron and Ponte, The Coffee Paradox: Global Markets, Commodity Trade and the Elusive Promise ofDevelopment; Ponte and Gibbon, "Quality Standards, Conventions, and Governance of Global Value Chains."
86 Lawrence Busch and Keiko Tanaka, "Rites of Passage: Constructing Quality in a Commodity Subsector," Science Technology and Human Values 21, no. 1 (1996).
87 Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry."
88 The clearest example is the introduction to Morgan, Marsden, and Murdoch, Worlds of Food: Place, Power and Provenance in the Food Chain. 36 demands an ontological understanding of nature that encapsulates not only food quality but broader notions of the cultural and political meaning of landscape and place. Political ecology provides a solution through an expanded understanding of Smith's production of nature called socionature. 89 Like Watts and Goodman, political ecologists have called for bridging the division between nature and society to include nature's agency or materiality in commodity production. 90 The division between nature and society stems first from
Kant's notion that nature is outside, or external, to the social and therefore pristine and untouched by humans (first nature), and must be preserved in this condition. Second,
Bacon viewed nature as something for people to dominate, control, and master under capitalism (second nature) through science or technology. Under classical political economy, these ideals translated into free markets, increased productivity, and freedom of choice. Thus, taming and controlling nature would emancipate humanity from material wants through free markets while releasing mankind's innovative and entrepreneurial power in order to foster self-realization through greater choice, consumption and a refinement of taste.91
Political ecologists recognized that neoliberalism was remaking nature, places, and communities by reconfiguring the way that people and society relate to nature as part
89 Neil Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production ofSpace (London: Blackwell Publishing, 1984).
90 Bruce Braun and Noel Castree, eds., Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium (New York: Routledge, 1998): Noel Castree, "Marxism and the Production of Nature," Capital and Class 72 (2000); Paul Robbins, Political Ecology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2004); Karl Zimmerer and Thomas Bassett, eds., Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies (New York: The Guilford Press, 2003).
91 David Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography ofDifference (Cambridge: MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996). 37 of the expansion of free markets and consumer choice.92 In reviewing this literature,
Nevins and Peluso point out that under neoliberalism nature is the subject and object of commodification, which makes the forms, scales, and characteristics of nature in the commodification process significant. In other words, "the nature of nature makes a difference. "93 Building on Smith and Swyngedouw, political ecologists have argued that nature is cast both materially and ideologically under capitalism, so that nature is always socionature---a heterogeneous, contradictory, and mutually constitutive connection between state-capital-society-nature.94 As such, nature is never external to capitalism and society, but rather helps to shape the commodification process. As West points out, socionature creates a political theory of nature that expresses the ideological and material articulation of nature with capitalism while acknowledging that nature is historically situated and constituted for social and political purposes.95 For my study, this means that fisheries are never just natural resources, and I use these frameworks to extend agro-food studies beyond the immediate networks to examine how the environment, quality and
92 Although political ecologists have been writing about this since the mid 1990s, only recently has the field termed this body of work the neoliberalization of nature and reprinted these early articles in an edited volume, see Nik Heynen and others, eds., Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences (New York: Routledge, 2007).
93 Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso, "Commoditization in Southeast Asia," in Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature and People in the Neoliberal Age, ed. Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 21.
94 Ibid; Smith, Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production ofSpace; Eric Swyngedouw, "Modernity and Hybridity: Nature, Regeneracionismo, and the Production of the Spanish Waterscape, 1890-1930," Annals ofthe Association for American Geographers 89 (1999); Paige West, Conservation is Our Government Now: the Politics ofEcology in Papua New Guinea (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006).
95 West, Conservation is Our Government Now: the Politics ofEcology in Papua New Guinea. 38 safety, and places are part of network construction and governance materially and ideologically. However, we need to have a broad framework that encapsulates all of these processes as a whole and connects them to economic development patterns in different places.
Accumulation by Dispossession
According to Harvey, the main achievement ofneoliberal globalization has not been the creation of wealth and well-being for all, but rather the redistribution of wealth through accumulation by dispossession-the appropriation of natural and cultural resources by the state and their transfer to private interests for capital accumulation. 96
Using this framework, political ecologists have shown how so-called self-regulated markets actually require public-private, state-capital alliances to establish technologies of control through enclosure, property rights, commercialization, marketization, and governance. 97 Since these concepts are central to the dispossession process, I borrow
Henyen and Robbins definitions as a platform on which to build.98
Enclosure involves limiting access to resources held in common or redefining their significance and meaning such that the resources become demarcated. Enclosure often precedes or is part of privatization, which entails a change in ownership or
96 Harvey, A BriefHistory ofNeoliberalism.
97 For example, see the individual essays in the following edited volumes Heynen and others, eds .. Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences; Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso, eds., Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature and People in the Neoliberal Age (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).
98 Nik Heynen and Paul Robbins, "The Neoliberalization of Nature: Governance, Privatization, Enclosure, and Valuation," Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 16, no. 1 (2005). 39 management of the resource from public to private control (firms or individuals) through the creation of property rights. In many cases, changes in resource management practices introduce commercial principles, such as efficiency or cost benefit analysis and new rules and norms related to these. This signals the commercialization of the resource and an institutional change.99 Marketization, or valuation, attaches economic value to cultural or natural resources either co-opting old or creating new cultural meanings and paths for enclosure of resources that cannot be fully privatized, such as culture and fish.
Governance refers to new forms of institutionalized political structures that appear to remove power from the state but in reality create webs of choices for states and firms in capturing resources through the other technologies of control just outlined.100 These concepts should not be viewed as hierarchical or evolutionary because all or some may operate simultaneously as part of the commodification process. However, the point is that neoliberal restructuring involves multiple forms of dispossession embedded in regulatory frameworks, the invention of tradition, and segmented markets that produce
social and environmental inequalities and differences while intensifying the commodification process. For my research, accumulation by dispossession highlights the myth of self-regulated markets by drawing attention to the actual processes that make
99 Karen Bakker, "Neoliberalizing Nature?: Market Environmentalism in Water Supply in England and Wales," in Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences, ed. Nik Heynen et al. (New York: Routledge, 2007).
100 Heynen and Roberts give a general definition of governance but my understanding has been influenced by additional scholarship, including Julie Guthman, "The Polanyian Way? Voluntary Food Labels as Neoliberal Governance," Antipode 39, no. 3 (2007); Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification; Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards. 40
states the "the author of [their] own restructuring" through the disciplinary work required to make markets function. IOI
Guthman uses this concept to argue that the blurring of industrial and domestic quality conventions in organic agriculture is a form of dispossession because standards
02 ascribe property rights to those firms and states that can meet them. I This induces
competition and consolidation while enforcement creates value so that labels
simultaneously concede the market as the locus of regulation but also employ tools
designed to create markets. Thus, standards and certification systems introduce technologies of control and opportunities for accumulation by dispossession and the production of social and environmental difference. This points toward how quality and
safety standards are commercialized and marketized as commodities for sale on the
global market. Yet we still need to extend dispossession to places, regional identity, and national markets, which shape commodity networks.
Branding Places and Cultures
David Harvey acknowledges that the commodification of culture and heritage through tourism is a primary avenue for accumulation by dispossession as value is
03 extracted from cultural authenticity and uniqueness. I Anthropologists have studied the ways that tourism fosters competition within communities for the authority to determine
101Becky Mansfield, "Beyond Rescaling: Reintegrating the National as a Dimension of Scalar Relations," Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 4 (2005): 462.
102 Guthman, "The Polanyian Way? Voluntary Food Labels as Neoliberal Governance."
103 Harvey, A BriefHistory ofNeoliberalism. 41 cultural representation, the environmental repercussions of tourism on local communities, and the marginalization of communities from local resources as they become privatized and marketized.104 This work has not connected these changes to tourism as an EOI strategy. In extending accumulation by dispossession to heritage tourism, I explore how nature and culture are produced as traditional and authentic and what this means for the
Chesapeake crabmeat industry.
As an economic development strategy, tourism is classified as an export commodity, positioning states and municipalities in competition with each other for tourists and investors.105 However, tourists want to visit destinations that possess a special character or uniqueness, which puts culture and heritage at the center of commodification and economic redevelopment. As Chambers notes, this attempt to differentiate one destination from another "intensifies the transformation of places into destinations that other people would like to visit." 106 Scholars studying this transformation chronicle how culture in the form of regional food, local occupations, and other cultural practices becomes an artifact located in a mythologized pre-modem past and essentialized notions of cultural difference framed as authenticity. 107 Kirshenblatt-
104 Erve Chambers, Native Tours: the Anthropology of Travel and Tourism (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland Press, 2000); David Griffith, "Social Capital and Economic Apartheid Along the Coasts of the Americas," Urban Anthropology 29, no. 3 (2000); Susan Stonich, The Other Side ofParadise: Tourism, Conservation, and Development in the Bay Islands (New York: Cognizant Communication Corp., 2000).
105 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Theorizing Heritage," Ethnomusicology 39, no. 3 (1995).
106 Chambers, Native Tours: the Anthropology of Travel and Tourism, 31.
107 Jane S. Becker, Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction ofan American Folk, 1930-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); Erve Chambers, "Thailand's Tourism Paradox: Identity and Nationalism as Factors in Tourism Development," in Conserving Culture: a New 42
Gimblett astutely points out that these essentialized cultures, valued for their ability to evade modem life, add "the value of pastness, exhibition, difference, and indigenieity" to places and cultures, creating a value-added product ready for export as privatized cultural resources property.108 The marketization process is reinforced as places associated with heritage become sources of capital investment through the construction of shopping districts, resorts, vacation or retirement homes, and other venues for consumption.109 The result is accumulation by dispossession as "a place that once existed primarily to serve local interests now comes to be revisioned in ways that are intended to serve the interests and desires of outsiders."110
The essentializing process inherent in heritage and cultural tourism is rooted in ideas of cultural difference, such as Redfield's dual society theory, which positioned
Western culture as capitalist, modem, scientific, and rationalist while others were pre- capitalist, traditional, isolated and more static. 111 Borrowing from Williams, V andergeest and Dupuis connect the traditional-modem dichotomy to a set of binaries, including
Discourse on Heritage, ed. Mary Hufford (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994); Jane Nadel-Klein, Fishing for Heritage: Modernity and Loss along the Scottish Coast (Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2003).
108 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Theorizing Heritage," 370.
109 Griffith, "Social Capital and Economic Apartheid Along the Coasts of the Americas." The Chesapeake faces all of the construction scenarios outlined here as well as the increasing suburbanization of the counties surrounding the Bay Bridge as they become bedroom communities of Baltimore and Washington DC.
11°Chambers, Native Tours: the Anthropology of Travel and Tourism, 31. See also Harvey, A BriefHistory ofNeoliberalism.
111 Robert Redfield, The Little Community (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). 43 nature-society, rural-urban and country-city. 112 The essays in their edited volume demonstrate how these constructs and their associated assumptions continue to be the basis for economic development programs in which dominant groups produce meaning by positioning nature, the countryside, and tradition in opposition to modem city life. 113
Thus, rurality and nature are linked as timeless, traditional, and distant while cities and culture are linked as progressive, modem, and civilized; images and labels that are also assigned to communities and local industries. They argue that these concepts then become the basis for defining, categorizing, and revaluing places and culture justified as saving the environment and "traditional" culture from unchecked progress while making them marketable. This addresses the shortcomings of the alternative food literature's assumptions regarding the creation of value for rural landscapes.
Markets and Consumption
As I have outlined earlier, a weakness of the global and alternative networks literature lies in the assertion that changes in the food industry are driven by consumer demand as a result of either food safety concerns or the desire for healthier foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables. While consumer tastes and concerns have changed since the
1980s, framing consumer demand as an independent variable driving changes to the food industry papers over more complex relationships. Instead, other scholars have shown
112 Peter Vandergeest and E. Melanie DuPuis, "Introduction: Creating the Countryside," in Creating the Countryside: the Politics ofRural and Environmental Discourse, ed. E. Melanie DuPuis and Peter Vandergeest (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996); Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).
113 Vandergeest and DuPuis, "Introduction: Creating the Countryside." 44 how consumer desires are produced within shifting political economy contexts and structural power systems.
For example, Mintz demonstrated that increased consumer demand for sugar during the industrial revolution was fabricated by the British state to handle surplus sugar production but also to shape the newly emerging industrial work day through tea breaks. 114 Belasco outlined how the food counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s was co- opted by major food corporations resulting in the differentiated neoliberal markets that emerged in the 1980s and 1990s.115 By focusing on the marketing strategies of companies, Belasco exposed how food corporations redefined the consumer in the 1980s as upscale and white, but segmented by other identities and lifestyles. Similarly,
Roseberry's analysis of marketing strategies in coffee trade journals highlighted how companies crafted differentiated markets by creating fictitious consumers segmented into classes, generations, and lifestyles. 116 All of these works highlight how markets are strategically created and since the 1980s built around ideas of quality related to place and nature.
114 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place ofSugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1986).
115 Warren Belasco, Meals to Come: A History of the Future ofFood (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006).
116 William Roseberry, "The Rise of Yuppie Coffee and the Reimagination of Class in the United States," American Anthropologist 98, no. 7 (1996). 45
Marsden and Wrigley take a different approach by examining the initial buyers- grocery stores. 117 They and other scholars demonstrated that in the wake of the food scares of the 1990s, new forms of state-retailer alliances emerged in which retailers were delegated the responsibility of managing and policing the food system and delivering the right to differentiated lifestyle consumption and safe food. 118 This, in turn, legitimized the state by conflating consumerism with freedom but also required new regulatory mechanisms (governance), such as standards, to enable and sustain the accumulation process justified as consumer rights. 119 These studies make markets and the argument of
"consumer demand" another location for power relationships in the food industry, and thus a site for dispossession.
However, Marsden's studies (and the majority of the alternative and NTC literature) have been singly focused on Europe and its major grocery chains to the exclusion of the United States and restaurants. This is problematic because by 1983
Americans spent forty percent of their food dollars at restaurants, eating out an average of
117 Terry Marsden and Neil Wrigley, "Retailing, the Food System and the Regulatory State," in Retailing, Consumption and Capital: Towards the New Retail Geography, ed. Neil Wrigley and Michelle Lowe (Essex: Longman Harlow Group, 1996).
118 Michelle Lowe and Neil Wrigley, "Towards the New Retail Geography," in Retailing, Consumption and Capital: Towards the New Retail Geography, ed. Neil Wrigley and Michelle Lowe (Essex: Longman Harlow Group, 1996); Terry Marsden, Andrew Flynn, and Michelle Harrison, Consuming Interests: The Social Provision ofFoods (London: UCL Press, 2000); Terry Marsden and Neil Wrigley, "Regulation, Retailing and Consumption," Environment and Planning A 27 (1995).
119This argument is made throughout the "new retail geography" that appeared in the mid-1990s and went on to influence more recent studies on NTC. See Marsden, Flynn, and Harrison, Consuming Interests: The Social Provision ofFoods; Marsden and Wrigley, "Regulation, Retailing and Consumption."; Neil Wrigley and M S Lowe, eds., Retailing, Consumption and Capital (Essex: Longman Harlow Publishers, 1996). 46
3. 7 times a week and these figures continued to grow throughout the 1990s.120 Arguably, restaurants have become the primary site for delivering lifestyle consumption rights, especially for seafood. My research builds on this work while filling this gap by examining the marketing strategies of the importing companies to highlight how they created national markets and differentiated consumption as an extension of the dispossession process already taking place on the Chesapeake. Rather than naturalize
NTC production as consumer demand, I show how the ideological and material aspects of creating commodities and markets are subsumed under "consumer demand" a production of scale inseparable from the "global" market. However, in focusing on restaurants and seafood, I take this literature in a new direction that explores the connection between the expansion of restaurants as an urban redevelopment model and the multiple scales in which the dispossession process takes place. In this way, I highlight how differentiated consumption and markets are purposefully created as an extension of the AD processes that begin with the natural resource.
In summary, rather than view Maryland crab cakes as either strictly a global or local food, I bridge the dichotomous agro-food literature by building on convention theory, socionature, and accumulation by dispossession. Framing food quality and safety as new arenas for the marketization and privatization of culture and nature and as sites for new governance systems will allow me to examine how a regional seafood specialty became an authenticity niche, and how neoliberal economic growth strategies in
Maryland and Thailand became interconnected through global seafood commodity
120 John Jakie and Keith Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 47 networks. While I build on this literature, I must remind the reader that seafood commodity networks have had limited attention from scholars. Thus, part of my analysis has also been to rethink the agricultural commodity chain models against the reality of seafood networks and the unique problems and conditions of the seafood industry.
The nature of my research has required that I study "agency from above," an examination of how global connections, defined as the strategic behavior of actors, produce global forces and structures. 121 Thus, I employed a multi-sited and multi-scalar approach and fieldwork was carried out in the Chesapeake and Thailand primarily among corporate executives, HACCP team members, crabmeat processors, inspectors, distributors, and state agencies responsible for economic growth and seafood safety. I have provided a detailed description of my methodologies in the Appendix.
Telling the Story of Maryland Crab Cakes
In the following chapters, I explore how Maryland crab cakes became an authenticity niche-a standardized, mass marketed commodity produced in Thailand that still evokes the image of hard working Chesapeake watermen and lazy days sailing the
Bay. I have structured the chapters to follow the commodity chain from the Chesapeake to Thailand and back to the United States, and, as much as possible, in chronological order though many events overlapped. Chapter Two examines the history of seafood safety standards in the United States and how different ideas of risk, nature, and states' rights to manage nature shaped the regulatory structure for seafood and its availability in
121 Zsuzsa Gille, "Critical Ethnography in the Time of Globalization: Toward a New Concept of Site," Cultural Studies, Critical Methodologies I, no. 3 (2001). 48 the United States. In this chapter, I use convention theory to explore why much of the
US seafood industry continued to operate under a domestic quality convention until the
1990s, when structural changes in national restaurant chains, fisheries management, and trade led to the adoption ofHACCP. This chapter concludes with an outline ofHACCP's basic principles and how these were incorporated into the WTO and US regulatory systems.
With a firm understanding of domestic and industrial quality conventions and how they shaped the seafood industry, Chapters Three and Four move to the Chesapeake.
In Chapter Three, I analyze the domestic quality convention that eventually defined the quality attributes of a Maryland crab cake by the late 1960s. However, at the same time, the state began marketing watermen and Maryland's maritime culture as an authentic experience to boost tourism through an authentic state identity. By the 1980s the crabmeat industry's production practices made the industry seem traditional and pre industrial, and Chapter Four looks at Phillips as a symbol of state heritage and the role of its all-you-can-eat restaurants in the redevelopment of the Baltimore Inner Harbor. The increased popularity of crab cakes led to higher competition for the natural resource and demands for an industrial quality convention as Phillips became a site for consuming
Chesapeake heritage and generating economic recovery while remaking the image of
Baltimore and Maryland.
Chapters Five and Six take the reader to Thailand where we first learn how
Phillips and two other companies-Byrd (United States) and Pakfoods (Thailand}-- inserted themselves into southern Thailand's existing crabmeat networks. I examine how 49 the companies and Thai state used HACCP to reconfigure the networks, and control and monitor people and the environment, and how these corporate standards were eventually institutionalized into Thai law. In Chapter Six, I analyze the environmental and social impacts ofHACCP and an industrial quality convention in the context of the post-1997 financial crisis in Thailand. Here I locate HACCP within an expanded and new framework for export-oriented industrialization and the cultural and market values that revalued the natural resource leading to overexploitation. I then examine how Thai
HACCP team members, inspectors and procurement officers used these new state product codes to marginalize Muslim crabmeat suppliers through a racialized HACCP.
Chapter Seven returns the reader to the United States to examine how Phillips and
Byrd took over the regional market for crabmeat before expanding their markets nation wide. I detail how they used the modernistic elements ofHACCP with the traditional image of the Bay to market their products to chefs and fully create the Maryland crab cake as an authenticity niche. Chapter Eight then examines the impacts of fifteen years of all-you-can-eat development on the Bay and imported crabmeat as a form of cultural and environmental dispossession. The loss of markets and the declining crab stock, coupled with the continued suburbanization of the Bay's shoreline left the Chesapeake crabmeat industry with few options as the state reframed the industry as a cultural resource on the verge of disappearing. In Chapter Nine, I assess the efforts by the
Chesapeake crabmeat industry and local Maryland lawmakers to regain some of the
Maryland brand and market share that they lost to Phillips. This chapter concludes with an analysis of the trade case brought before the United States International Trade 50
Commission where we see how the ability to provision the nation and deliver consumer rights creates structural power for Phillips and the other importers.
The concluding chapter outlines the implications of this research and directions for future research on seafood commodity chains centered on my aim in telling this story.
First, I want to make readers aware that the depletion of fish stocks in our oceans is not a tragedy of the commons, but rather a tragedy of dispossession done in our name-the consumer-and justified through claims about our right to consume places, foods, and cultures as a lifestyle. This lifestyle embodies a set of values regarding food, industry, and development that are unsustainable both environmentally and socially as local communities are dispossessed of cultural and natural resources, old and new social inequalities are affirmed, and the biodiversity of the oceans, seas and rivers is destroyed to the point where we soon may no longer be able to eat seafood. 122 Second, over the past twenty years, dialogue and debate over alternatives to the global food system has grown in dynamic ways and so too has the literature on these subjects. However, wild caught fish and seafood are conspicuously absent from these discussions. 123 From my perspective, this means that fish and the biodiversity of our oceans and coastal waterways are also absent from any vision of a different food future, and so too are the livelihoods of
122 For those readers who believe that aquaculture will fill the void, even if we look beyond the environmental degradation farmed seafood has created we must recognize that not all species can be fanned. This includes the blue crab.
123 Readers should note that the majority of literature on fisheries in developing countries for the last fifteen years has focused on the environmental and social impacts of aquaculture, but not connected this export-oriented industrialization pattern to changes in the food industry as other NTC studies have done. 51 fishermen and small-scale seafood processors. The first step in correcting this and beginning a "slow seafood" dialogue is a better understanding of the networks through which our seafood travels and what it means to eat Maryland crab cakes-or shrimp gumbo, fish tacos, and sushi-from Thailand or other distant countries. CHAPTER2
THE NATURE OF SEAFOOD SAFETY
We have always had to have 'a good reason' for doing away with small operators, and in modem times the good reason has often been sanitation, for which there is apparently no small or cheap technology.
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling ofAmerica
Seafood has never been a mainstay of the American diet. We have the lowest consumption rate of any Western country at eleven pounds of seafood per capita annually between 1909 and 1979 .1 Instead, the foundation of our national diet has been meat supplied through a consolidated industrial food system that made beef, chicken, and pork cheap and abundant. 2 Under this system, regional foods and their tastes gradually gave way to standardization and convenience between 1880 and the 1950s, especially in restaurant fare. By the 1980s, we could buy the same tasting hamburger anywhere in the nation and Americans consumed an average of 183 pounds of meat per capita annually.3
1 All seafood consumption data from U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, US. Annual per Capita Consumption of Commercial Fish and Shellfish, 1910-2005 (Silver Spring, MD: 2005): available from www.st.nmfs.gov/stl/fus/fus05/08 _perita2005.pdf (accessed 1 June 2006).
2 On national diet and changes see Harvey Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: the Transformation ofthe American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). Roger Horowitz details much ofthis, see Roger Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2006).
3 U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food Availability Data, 1909-2007 (Economic Research Service, 2008): available from http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/FoodConsumption/FoodA vailSpreadsheets.htm (accessed 21 January 2009).
52 53
Seafood has been the exception to this industrial narrative despite the unnaturally shaped fish stick and canned tuna, the industry's culinary contributions to mass consumption. For most Americans, seafood was "not what you had at home, not what you were used to;" it was an exotic treat when dining out or the course served before the meat.4 For others, seafood was a "Friday food" served for religious observances or the central ingredient in regional and ethnic cuisines. The majority of the US industry remained regional and unconsolidated as well in which family-owned companies produced seasonal foods. However, seafood's place in our national diet changed dramatically, and seemingly, overnight starting in the 1980s.
First, health concerns over cholesterol, fat, and heart disease associated with red meat made Americans reconsider this staple, especially after the much publicized health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids found only in fish. 5 Second, and more importantly, a new
"American cuisine" spread across the nation, awakening our conservative palate and
ushering in the gentrification of taste. 6 The franchised restaurants of celebrity chefs transformed regional American and ethnic seafood dishes into a new fusion cuisine, making blackened redfish, sushi, lobster enchiladas, and any species that could be grilled into a succession of national taste trends. Not to be outdone, corporate chain restaurants
4 Robert Cornfield, Lundy's: Reminiscences and Recipes.from Brooklyn's Legendary Restaurant (New York: Harper Collins, 1998).
5 For a history of omega-3s see Susan Allport, The Queen ofFats: Why Omega-3s Were Removed from the Western Diet and What We Can Do to Replace Them (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006).
6 For thorough accounts of how the US became a gourmet nation, see Warren Belasco, Meals to Come: A History ofthe Future ofFood (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006); David Kamp, The United States ofArugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story ofthe American Food Revolution, reprint ed. (New York: Broadway, 2007). 54 translated these dishes into populist fare, using seafood to differentiate their menus while local seafood chain restaurants expanded into national chains featuring their regional specialty. Serving and eating seafood had become not only a lifestyle preference, but a corporate strategy to segment markets and increase profits. US consumption jumped thirty percent by 1987.7
Just as restaurants began to normalize sashimi tuna and fire-grilled shrimp into the
American diet the safety of Americans' seafood became a public policy crisis. Starting in the mid 1980s, consumer advocacy groups published reports on increased levels of industrial pollutants found in fish, such as mercury and cadmium. Then in the summers of 1987 and 1988 medical waste, including syringes and vials of blood, washed up on
New Jersey beaches followed by the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. Americans began to view the marine environment as a food safety risk that could give them AIDS or cause cancer. Seafood scares only intensified amid reports on widespread salmonella contamination and decomposed fish in New York and Chicago fish markets coupled with outbreaks of two new pathogens: Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli 0157. 8 By the end of the decade, Time and Newsweek featured magnified images of pathogens on their
7 U.S. Department of Commerce, US. Annual per Capita Consumption of Commercial Fish and Shellfish, 1910-2005 (accessed.).
8 All of these factors are highlighted in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, The Consumer Seafood Safety Act: Hearing before the National Ocean Policy Study on S. 2538, 102 Congress, 2nd Session, 30 June 1992, 1-3. But see also Public Voice, The Great American Fish Scandal: Health Risks Unchecked (Washington DC: Public Voice, 1986). The first recognized Listeria outbreak occurred in 1985 on cheese. This pathogen causes meningitis and spontaneous abortions, but unlike other pathogens thrives in wet, refrigerated and frozen temperatures which made it a particular problem for seafood. 55 covers, and seafood consumption dropped.9 Between 1985 and 1995, seafood safety was the most debated food topic in Congress with over twenty bills proposed. 10 But scientists and policy makers had known about many of these hazards as early as the 1890s, so why did seafood seem so hazardous and the risks so new in the 1990s?
My answer is that dramatic changes in food consumption patterns are not just random results of consumer choice. Instead, as Mintz has shown, new consumption patterns are the consequence of various political blocs to influence policy makers in setting the terms by which foods become available and by creating demand for that food. 11 One of the avenues for setting these terms has always been through the development of "regulations affecting matters of purity and standards of quality" for food, which determine who can provision the nation. 12 Seafood scares were part of broader food scares that gripped the United States and Europe throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s at a time when these countries were establishing a global trading system. 13
During this time, over sixty percent of the seafood consumed in the United States was
9 Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).
10 Congress introduced over eight bills in 1990 alone, see E. Spencer Garrett and Martha Hudak Roos, "Developing an HACCP-Based Inspection System for the Seafood Industry," Food Technology 45 (1991).
11 Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place ofSugar in Modern History (New York: Penguin, 1986).
12 Ibid., 171.
13 Britain and France battled mad cow disease and pathogenic outbreaks while the US meat industry faced deadly outbreaks of E. coli 157. 56 imported primarily from developing countries and seafood represented the most heavily traded international food commodity in the world. 14
Thus, debates over seafood hazards and setting standards in the late twentieth century were about more than safe food and consumer health. They were about how to allocate power and manage risk, blame, and accountability in our increasingly globalized food system and within a highly fragmented industry that continues to be dependent on small-scale producers. 15 The result of these debates was the implementation of a global food governance mechanism that set the terms for making food available-the Hazard
Analysis and Critical Control Points food safety system (HACCP). HACCP uses science-based risk assessments to identify and prevent hazards from entering the food chain, and employs auditing and traceability methods to demonstrate that risks are controlled and to hold actors accountable.16 In other words, safety is designed into seafood from "boat to throat" and assured through auditing the company's production records not inspection of the products. In the United States, the seafood industry was the first food sector mandated to adopt HACCP.
14 Lahsen Abadouch, Fish Top Traded Commodity (UN Food and Agricultural Organization, 2004): FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 442, available from http://www.fao.org/documents/show_ cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/007 /y4722e/y4 722e00.htm (accessed 23 May 2005).
15 Liora Salter, Mandated Sdence: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards (Dordrecht Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988).
16 On the seafood HACCP rule and boat to throat safety, see Garrett and Hudak-Roos, "Developing an HACCP-Based Inspection System for the Seafood Industry."; E.S. Garrett, M. Hudak Roos, and D.R. Ward, "Implementation of the HACCP Program by the Fresh and Processed Seafood Industry," in HACCP in Meat, Poultry and Fish Processing: Advances in Meat Research Series ed. A.M. Pearson and T.R. Dutson (London: Blackie Academic Professional, 1996). 57
Since 1995, transnational companies and states have used HACCP to remake the seafood industry and marine environments in the image of pathogens and contaminants- risks to be controlled through the social and environmental relationships in global seafood networks. In remaking and controlling nature, an industrial quality convention has emerged, but so too has the commercialization and marketization of safety standards.
Seafood safety has become an avenue for differentiating products and competing in quality-defined global markets. 17 This chapter examines why the seafood industry operated under a domestic quality convention and the changes leading to the establishment of HACCP as the global governance system for seafood. I first outline what food quality and safety standards are and their role in industrializing food and expanding trade. I then explore how seafood's unique characteristics influenced regulators and the United States Congress in understanding and setting seafood safety standards, leading to two separate quality conventions for meat and seafood between
1890 and 1970. 18 I then outline the changes that took place in the restaurant industry, seafood processing, and fisheries management that pushed certain sectors of the seafood industry toward an industrialized quality convention. Finally, I examine the debates over
HACCP and discuss its significance as the new global governance system.
17 Stefano Ponte and Peter Gibbon, "Quality Standards, Conventions, and Governance of Global Value Chains," Economy and Society 34, no. 1 (2005); D.C.H. Watts, B. Ilbery, and D. Maye, "Making Reconnections in Agro-food Geography: Alternative Systems of Food Provision," Progress in Human Geography 29, no. 1 (2005).
18 I borrow from Apostle who argues that small capital persists in the seafoof/fishing industries because of its unique characteristics linked to perishability, seasonality, and unpredictability, making it a differentiated capitalist structure, rather than dualist or dependency structures. See Richard Apostle and Gene Barrett, eds., Emptying Their Nets: Small Capital and Rural Industrialization in the Nova Scotia Fishing Industry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992). 58
Food Standards: Quality and Safety
New seed types, fertilizer, tractors, animal growth hormones, and preservation technologies are most often associated with the industrialization of the US food system and making mass marketed food a reality. 19 However, while such inputs increased the volume, size, and shelf-life of crops and animals, industrial food quality and safety standards transformed nature into standardized commodities. As an industrial quality convention, standards simplify nature's diversity by dividing fruits, vegetables, meat, and other foods into graded abstractions that allow companies to mix the harvests from different production sites, creating economies of scale and expanded markets.2° Food standards, then, have shaped the structure and practices of our industrial food system, but they have also shaped our cultural understanding of food and eating through the availability of foods and how we judge them and their makers. Discernment in our dominant American foodview, as Trubek notes, is based on external information, such as grades, inspection certifications, labels, prices, and brands.21
At the most basic level, industrial food quality and safety standards are an agreed upon set of criteria or norms for measuring the technical and physical characteristics of
19 See for example, Warren Belasco and Roger Horowitz, eds., Food Chains (Philadelphia: Temple University, 2008); Deborah Fitzerald, Every Farm a Factory: the Industrial Ideal in American Agriculture (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2003); Vandana Shiva, The Violence of the Green Revolution (London: Zed Books, 1991).
20 William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991).
21 Amy Trubek, The Taste ofPlace: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). 59 food and the processes and conditions under which food has been produced. 22 Under an industrial quality convention, standards are established and enforced by state agencies or a third party who inspect and certify the quality and safety of foods. Standards not only add value to food, but also prevent suppliers, workers, and distributors from reducing the value of the food and thus create, legitimize, and regulate the social relations of things and people in the network. 23
Quality and safety standards are not the same thing in the food industry. Quality standards measure size, weight, color, flavor, smell, perishability or nutritional content and are often measured through organoleptic, or sensory tests, and grading systems.
These standards can be mandatory (required by law) or voluntary, in which case they are established by a trade association, retailer, or other entity. Browsing through a grocery store provides several examples of quality standards: grade A eggs, Select grade beef, expiration dates, and even the two scoops of raisins in the cereal. Thus, grades and standards establish the rules and practices for the production and circulation of these foods while segmenting them into several classes with distinct values and meaning that make similarities and dissimilarities recognizable.24 Rather than a barrier to trade, industrial quality conventions coordinate the flow of trade by acting as a connecting
22 Mike Dillon, "Food Standards and Auditing," in Auditing in the Food Industry: from Safety and Quality to Environmental and Other Audits, ed. Mike Dillon and Chris Griffith (Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing Limited, 2001); Stefano Ponte, "Bans, Tests, and Alchemy: Food Safety R.::gulation and the Uganda Fish Export Industry," Agriculture and Human Values 24, no. 2 (2007).
23 Keiko Tanaka and Lawrence Busch, "Standardization as a Means for Globalizing a Commodity: the Case of Rapeseed in China," Rural Sociology 68, no. 1 (2003).
24 Ibid. 60 tissue for industrial development, and determining participation and access to markets.25
However, food commodities are also cultural objects with specific cultural meanings and histories that shape and define quality. Food quality then is also a social construction connected to cultural preferences and social identities that define what makes food 'good' or appropriate. For example, part of the USDA grading system for beef is based on the marbling (fat) of the cut, a distinctly American idea of quality.26 Food quality standards, therefore, must be viewed as a translation of specific physical and cultural attributes into measurable, codifiable standards based on production techniques and culturally specific food practices, meanings, and histories.
Food safety standards are a subset of quality standards but measure the level and acceptability of risk for health hazards while institutionalizing forms of trust and accountability.27 Food hazards include bacterial, microbiological, chemical, parasitic, and physical contaminants, most of which can only be detected through laboratory testing. Like food quality, food safety standards are also more than just the material attributes of the food. Defining hazards and setting standards involves cultural and political perceptions, opinions, and values in the decision making process.28 First,
25 Ponte, "Bans, Tests, and Alchemy: Food Safety Regulation and the Uganda Fish Export Industry."; Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards.
26 For a discussion of this specific example, see Jeffrey Pilcher, The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2006).
27 M. McEachem and others, "Regulatory Verification of Safety and Quality Control Systems in the Food Industry," in Auditing in the Food Industry: from Safety and Quality to Environmental and Other Audits, ed. Mike Dillon and Chris Griffith (Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing, 2001).
28 Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism; Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards. 61 standards are a product of negotiations about the acceptability and economic consequences of risks. The food industry has always played a significant role in these deliberations along with regulators, consumer groups, and scientists.29 However, the science involved is what Salter calls mandated science--scientific studies commissioned by government agencies, regulators, corporations, or advocacy groups. Such reports are used to draw conclusions to support specific regulatory actions and public policy decisions, locating scientific understanding within social and institutional contexts saturated with power.
Second, as Power points out, evidence of food hazards "is not just out there to collect" because systems of verification, accountability and methods of measurement represent styles ofreasoning that are culturally appropriate and institutionally established. 30 Trust and institutionalized forms of accountability, or checking up on each other, differ across cultures, and are informed by what Nestle characterizes as the two culture problem of risk assessment through science-based and values-based approaches
(See Table 1).31 Science-based approaches to food safety focus on the characteristics of the risk and the probability it will lead to illness, which makes the risks seem measurable, objective, and controllable.32 Value-based approaches embody what risk analysts call
29 Charles 0. Jackson, Food and Drug Legislation in the New Deal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); James Harvey Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
30 Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 72.
31 Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism; Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards.
32 Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism, 16-18. 62
"dread and outrage" factors, which consider the cultural meaning and value produced by the specific food item for those consuming it. These factors infuse food safety standards with political and social values that change over time.33 Therefore, food standards and risk assessments take shape and acquire meaning in different historical contexts connected to changes in consumption, production, and trade, but are also deeply intertwined with ideas about the natural environment in capitalist economies. 34 This is not to say that the material consequences of food hazards (illness or even death) are cultural constructions, but that perceptions regarding food risks "can be changed, magnified, dramatized, or minimized" through the socially and politically defined knowledge about them.35
In summary, quality and safety are not the same, and it is possible to produce and consume high quality food that meets cultural and industry standards, but is not safe. All industrial food standards regulate the social and environmental relationships in food production-consumption chains because they involve measurements, such as organoleptic tests (sensory tests), tolerance levels, or grading systems. These tests appear to be technical and scientific, and thus objective and universal, however, the measurements and systems of inspection reflect cultural, social and political values regarding risk and the food itself. Thus quality and safety standards must be understood as complex
33 Ibid., 20-21; Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards.
34 Noel Castree and Bruce Braun, "The Construction of Nature and the Nature of Construction: Analytical and Political Tools for Building Survivable Futures," in Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium, ed. Bruce Braun and Noel Castree (London: Routledge, 1998).
35 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (London: Sage, 1992), 23. 63 assemblages of "natural inputs and their environments, production techniques and technologies, and foods and their uses" that shape market access and the availability of foods for sale. 36 From this perspective, not all foods are subject to the same standards and inspection systems. The meat and seafood industries are primary examples: the meat
industry operated under an industrial quality convention while the seafood industry operated under a domestic quality convention in which quality and safety were established interpersonally or through a product's origin rather than through an inspection certification.
Table 1. The Two Culture Problem of Risk Assessment
Science-based Value-based
Source: Reprinted with permission from Marion Nestle, Safe Food: Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
36 Becky Mansfield, "Fish, Factory Trawlers, and Imitation Crab: the Nature of Quality in the Seafood Industry," Journal of Rural Studies 19 (2003): 9. 64
Fish, Pure Food, and Mass Markets
In 1934, the Consumer Advisory Board of the National Recovery Administration
(NRA) issued a report stating that the US seafood industry had failed "to recognize and enforce among themselves standards of quality" at the national level leading to "disorder and chaos in marketing methods" and the lowest per capita consumption of seafood in the world.37 The Board recommended that the federal government institute a mandatory grading and inspection program for seafood like the one governing the meat industry- inspection and certification of all products at the factory. The USDA inspection label and grading sticker had provided consumers with a guarantee of quality and safety recognizable across the nation and the Consumer Advisory Board felt that national seafood standards guaranteed by a federal inspector would give "Mrs. Housewife" confidence in seafood products and the ability to easily discern their quality. 38 The
Bureau of Commercial Fisheries believed that standards would increase seafood sales through a symbol of trust-an inspection label-but also develop and guarantee national markets, as it had for the meat industry. 39
37 John Ruel Manning, Chief Technologist, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, memo 2450-E quoted in National Recovery Administration, Recommendations from the Consumer's Advisory Board of the NRA for the Revision ofthe Fisheries Industry Code with Reference to Standards, Quality, Grading, and Labeling Fresh and Canned Fish, Report #3 (Washington, DC: National Recovery Administration, 1934).
38 Throughout my research various federal agencies, national trade associations and journals like Quick Frozen Foods refer to consumers as "Mrs. Housewife".
39 National Recovery Administration, Recommendations from the Consumer's Advisory Board of the NRA for the Revision ofthe Fisheries Industry Code with Reference to Standards, Quality, Grading, and Labeling Fresh and Canned Fish, Report #3. 65
The fact that the seafood and meat industries operated under different inspection systems and quality conventions stems from the early Pure Food legislation in the United
States. The Meat Inspection Act of 1906 applied to beef, pork, lamb, and goat while seafood was regulated under the Pure Food Act. Under these Acts, the USDA certified quality and safety for meat, establishing an industrial quality convention, but seafood was not certified by any agency and only periodically inspected, leading to a domestic quality convention in which quality varied state to state, and even factory to factory. Congress and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries (BCF) viewed fish as a natural resource to be managed by states, not a national food industry.40 Regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, resisted certifying the quality of seafood because of the risks associated with the fishing industry and its dependence on a wild caught resource. In both cases, values-based risk assessments prevailed during the 1906 legislation, but with very different outcomes that shaped the industries for decades.
Meat: USDA Inspected
Chicago had become America's slaughterhouse by the 1890s, and the beef and pork industries were highly concentrated and vertically integrated for their day, including stockyards, refrigerated railroad cars, and private wholesalers throughout the country.41
But the delivery of canned and fresh meat to the nation relied on untested preservatives,
40 This assessment is based on my analysis of several decades of government documents, but Taylor makes the argument for the BCF, see Joseph E. Taylor, Making Salmon: an Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999).
41 By 1903 six firms controlled approximately ninety percent of the beefin the U.S and were vertically integrated, including operations in Argentina, see Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation, 30-31. 66 such as borax to hide or hinder spoilage, and unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses went unchecked. Newly established chemistry labs in state offices revealed impurities hidden in meat, resulting in public outrage in the United States and a ban on American beef and pork products in England. In 1906, the "dread and outrage" resulting from
Upton Sinclair's descriptions of unsanitary practices in Chicago's meatpacking plants in
The Jungle shook consumer trust in meat. 42 That year, Congress passed the first national food purity standards and inspection systems in the United States-the Meat Inspection
Act and the Pure Food and Drugs Act. 43
The new legislation relied heavily on values-based assessments to risk and therefore made the adulteration of foods illegal. Under the law, adulteration was defined as the purposeful adding of harmful ingredients, and foods were adulterated only if they: contained any added or substituted ingredient that reduced the food's quality; concealed damaged or inferior ingredients; contained any added poisonous or other deleterious ingredient that would render it injurious to health; or consisted of any filthy, decomposed or putrid animal.44 Adulteration, the foundation of the US food safety system, conceptualized food hazards as the result of deliberate actions by people to taint the food supply or dupe the consumer. Within this legal framework, the Meat Inspection Act made the USDA accountable for beef, pork, lamb, and goat through a "continuous
42 Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 1995 [1906]).
43 The Pure Food and Drug Act and the later PFDCA of 1938 regulated all otfl.er food commodities except for meat; however, agricultural products fell under the jurisdiction of the USDA which did have the authority to set standards.
44 Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906, 266. The codfish proviso exempted food that used externally applied preservatives such as borax to protect it during shipment ifthe preservative could be washed off prior to sale. 67 inspection system." This system required a federal inspector to be present in every meat factory and to conduct ante and post mortem inspections of all animals slaughtered to insure they were not diseased. The system also looked for purposeful adulteration of processed fresh and canned meats by conducting sensory tests on finished products to insure they were not spoiled or decomposing. All meat sold in interstate commerce had to receive a federal grading label and inspection certification from inspectors guaranteeing the product's wholesomeness and purity, as well as its quality.45 Under the continuous inspection system, food quality and safety began and ended at the factory, and relied heavily on sensory inspections to insure safety.
Requiring a federal inspector in every meat factory benefited the largest packing companies, Swift and Armour, who operated centralized slaughterhouses. Smaller companies dispersed across large geographic distances found their meat spoiling while they waited for the inspector or were confined to selling their products in local markets.
In fact, the USDA had gained the support of the "Beef Trust" by promising that mandatory national standards would further speed consolidation of the industry by eliminating smaller, regional producers and allow the Big Five to control prices.46
Additionally, federal meat quality standards would allow the already international industry to continue exporting its products by meeting the new food standards in England and France. The "USDA Inspected, Grade A" label quickly became a proxy for
45 Ibid.
46 The government made the same promise in 1891 when the first national meat standards were passed, but did not include continuous inspection of products. Levenstein, Revolution at the Table: the Transformation ofthe American Diet. 68 wholesomeness, purity, and consistency, as well as trust between the companies, retailers, and consumers. In 1959, the USDA extended the inspection system to chicken as the industry moved toward vertical integration through subcontracting and increased production through cross-breeding.47 By the 1970s, chicken was no longer a seasonal meat, but an everyday food and prices had dropped well below beef and pork.
The continuous inspection system and national grading standards symbolized consistency and trust not only between the meat industry and consumers, but between farmers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers. These standards facilitated the marketing campaigns developed by the USDA starting in the 1920s and fulfilled the nation's ability to put "a chicken in every pot" as the meat industry pioneered our industrial food system. 48 The creation of mass markets became emblematic of the nation's democratic ideals and modem living; the foundation for our American foodview.49 The continuous inspection system remained the gold standard for accountability in the United States until the food scares of the 1990s. The outbreaks of salmonella and E. coli revealed that sensory inspections could not detect pathogens, but also that production speeds had increased beyond the capacity of inspectors to keep up.
Yet, despite the obvious problems in the meat industry in the 1990s, the seafood industry
47 All chicken information from William Boyd and Michael Watts, "Agro Industrial Just-In-Time: the Chicken Industry and Postwar American Capitalism," in Globalizing Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, ed. David Goodman and Michael Watts (London: Routledge, 1997); Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation.
48 This phrase was part of a 1928 Republican campaign slogan touting prosperity under Republic administrations as chicken was still a seasonal, luxury food at the time.
49 Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: the Politics of Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Vintage Books, 2003). 69 was the first mandated to adopt HACCP because the definition of adulteration in 1906 positioned seafood safety and quality as part of a state's responsibility to manage natural resources. Thus, seafood remained a regional food, and not a national commodity.
Seafood: Voluntary Compliance
The 1934 NRA report documented a long list of problems the seafood industry needed to correct to gain the trust of consumers and become a standardized, national commodity. This included the lack of uniform quality standards such as grades for size and color, and the lack of mandatory safety standards and inspections that allowed unsanitary conditions on fishing vessels and in factories to go unchecked. 50 Based on my analysis of federal records, these problems reappeared in debates and reports on the US seafood industry for the next fifty years without significant regulatory action because states held jurisdiction over fisheries resources and were, therefore, responsible for establishing and enforcing seafood standards. This belief was reflected in the 1906 legislation which divided jurisdiction for setting and enforcing seafood quality and safety standards between state health departments, state fisheries management agencies, and the
Bureau of Chemistry, which became the FDA.51 Seafood was therefore not included in
50 At the time of the report, the most prevalent form of fraud involved cutting circular pieces from the fillets of haddock or halibut and selling them as scallops. In 2007, species substitution continued and was the top concern for the seafood industry.
51 The Smithsonian Institution established the US Fish and Fisheries Commission in 1870 as a research agency. In 1887, Congress turned the commission into an independent agency and in 1914 the commission became the Bureau of Fisheries under the Department of Commerce and Labor. In 1939 the Bureau was transferred to the Department of the Interior and became the Fish and Wildlife Service and in 1956 became the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. In 1970, the Bureau was transfe1Ted to the new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration under the Department of Commerce and renamed the National Marine Fisheries Service. 70 the Meat Inspection Act and, instead, was regulated by the Pure Food and Drug Act (later the Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act).
This Act did not require an inspector in every factory like the continuous inspection system and until 1938, the FDA did not have the authority to even enter factories and conduct sanitation inspections. 52 Additionally, neither the BCF nor the
FDA had the authority to actually set quality or sanitation standards or issue certifications of inspection, as did the USDA. Only the seafood industry and individual states were authorized to establish quality and safety codes, and most created only voluntary codes while the FDA and state health departments conducted random sampling of finished products already on the market to inspect for adulteration. Furthermore, the BCF was essentially a fisheries research agency that provided states with scientific data and advice on fisheries management. Unlike the USDA, the Bureau did not have the authority to create marketing programs or conduct consumer research. 53 Finally, the Meat Act stipulated that the costs of the continuous inspection system would be paid by tax payers, but the seafood industry would have to pay the costs for any inspection system. After the
Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act passed in 1938, the FDA began inspecting factories,
52 The Bureau of Chemistry/FDA was authorized to test for adulterated foods through the collection and analysis of food samples, but had to obtain permission from factories prior to entering. Given these parameters, the Bureau established a voluntary system of end-product testing, which detected adulterations only after the foods reached the retailer and consumer. For information on FDA authority, see Young, Pure Food: Securing the Federal Food and Drugs Act of 1906.
53 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, To Provide for Economic Studies ofthe Fishery Industry, Market News Service, and Orderly Marketing ofFishery Products: Hearing on S. 3584, 74th Congress, Second Session, 14 January 1936; Michael Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy (Washington DC: Island Press, 2002). 71 but this amounted to a federal inspection once every other year.54 In essence, this regulatory system left individual seafood companies to police themselves with the FDA and state agencies responsible for ensuring compliance.
Unable to guarantee quality through a national certification system, the US seafood industry developed a domestic quality convention that differed state to state, fishery to fishery and in many cases factory to factory. However in the 1940s, the emerging frozen seafood industry began pushing for a mandatory continuous inspection system from Congress, focusing on accountability and the expansion of markets. My analysis shows that the debates over setting seafood safety standards between 1940 and
1971 articulated with two concerns over economic consequences and risks that can be traced back to seafood's position as a wild caught resource: 1) marine environmental degradation; 2) the uncertainties of the fishing industry coupled with the decentralized structure of the processing industry. The frozen seafood industry would develop its own industrial quality convention in the late 1960s and then would build the case that the unique risks associated with the seafood industry required a more modem inspection system than that used for the meat industry.
Adulterated Environments
To many regulators in 1906, fresh whole fish visually and legally appeared to be unadulterated because food hazards resulted from people adding unknown substances to processed food or from diseased animals, not pathogens or chemical contaminants
54 Frederic P. Lee, "The Enforcement Provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act," Lmv and Contemporary Problems 6, no. I (1939). 72 introduced through the marine or factory environment.55 As wild game harvested in a diversity of habitats, fish absorb microbiological, chemical, and other contaminants through their flesh and by eating other marine animals (See Table 2). Seafood safety and
Table 2. Environmental Contaminants of Seafood
PCBs,DDT, Chlordane, Methyl mercury, Arsenic water-borne all fish crustacean, molluskan Cadmium water-borne bivalve
Clostridium botulinum canned seafood raw or inadequately cooked Parasitic worms water-borne seafood
water-borne and raw molluskan shellfish, all Norwalk Virus improper handling fish
Source: Data from the FDA "Bad Bug Book," U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook. Washington DC: Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 2005, Available from http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/intro.html (accessed 11November2005).
55 Sandra Hoffmann, "Getting to Risk-Based Food Safety Regulatory Management: Lessons from Federal Environmental Policy," in Toward Safer Food, ed. Sandra Hoffmann and Michael Taylor (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 2005). 73
quality thus start with marine environmental quality and carry through to production and
consumption practices, all of which directly impacts the "types of microorganisms, toxins, parasites, chemicals and other potential hazards" found in seafood. 56 Adulteration
and the Pure Food Laws did not question the wholesomeness of seafood, perpetuating the
view that the marine environment was a "natural" garbage disposal for the by-products of
industrialization. This view prevailed even though marine water quality and its
connection to seafood and human health were well documented at the time.
When four college students in Connecticut died of typhoid during a severe
outbreak in 1893, medical scientists used germ theory to connect the disease to the
consumption ofraw oysters harvested from the Chesapeake's sewage polluted waters.57
The waterways of major U.S. cities were often described as stinking cesspools and public health officials considered the fall and winter months the "cholera and typhoid season"
because of the increased consumption of oysters.58 Despite evidence of this food safety
risk, typhoid outbreaks from the consumption of raw oysters continued throughout the
early 20th century because legislators did not consider environmental pollution an
adulterant.
56 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Agriculture, Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry, Testimony on Inspection ofSeafood Products by Michael Friedman, Deputy Commissioner for Operations U. S. FDA, 22 May 1996.
57 Steven Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries ofContrlJ4Jersy, Concern and Legislation (Centerville MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1997). Oysters absorb toxins and pollutants in concentrated rates because they filter water, and consumption ofraw oysters increases the risk to consumers.
58 J. Lawrence-Hamilton, Bulletin ofthe United States Fish Commission: Foul Fish and Filth Fevers (Washington DC: U.S. Fish Commission, 1893). 74
After a particularly deadly episode in 1924, the oyster industry together with state health officials approached the Surgeon General of the United States for a solution. 59
The result was the National Shellfish Sanitation Program (NSSP), a voluntary program that only applied to oysters, clams, and mussels. Under the program, states monitored water quality and closed polluted areas to shellfish harvesting and also conducted periodic inspections of factories. However, as a voluntary code and not a legal statute, the NSSP held little accountability or enforcement. A mandatory inspection system remained elusive primarily because marine water quality problems and the management of natural resources fell under state jurisdiction and, according to the Surgeon General, the "responsibility for the sanitary control of the shellfish industry rests chiefly upon the individual states."60 Not all states shared the same commitment to improved water quality and even the Supreme Court considered pollution an inevitable consequence of commerce, industry, and urbanization and thus an acceptable risk. For example, Virginia and the federal Supreme Court ruled against the Virginia oyster industry's petition to require sewage treatment plants to improve the Chesapeake's water quality, citing the ocean as a "great natural purifying basin."61 The creation of the NSSP located
59 On the history ofNSSP and water quality in the Chesapeake, see Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation; U.S. Food and Drug Administration, History ofthe National Shellfish Sanitation Program 2005): available from http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/nss3-9.html (accessed 17 October 2007).
60 This was the main point in a letter from the Surgeon General to the state health officers. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, History of the National Shellfish Sanitation Program (accessed.).
61 Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes cited in Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation, 94. 75 accountability for seafood safety with the shellfish processors but did not require states to improve their water quality, only monitor the environment. 62
The marine environment formally became adulterated in 1971 with the discovery that methyl mercury, cadmium, DDT, and arsenic had leached into rivers and other
63 waterways where they bioaccumulated in fish and then people. During Congressional hearings, academic scientists presented studies showing that these carcinogens were not only present in the marine environment and fish, but also in people who ate the fish.
Evidence from members of a new diet club called Weight Watchers showed that increased consumption of canned tuna and fresh swordfish led to higher levels of methyl
• 64 mercury m the human body.
The presence of carcinogenic industrial pollutants in processed seafood made the foods, and thus the environment, adulterated under the 1958 Delaney Clause of the Food
Additives Amendment. The Amendment was the first to articulate risk as relative to the level of exposure to a given chemical, but the Delaney Clause defined all carcinogenic chemicals found in processed foods as additives and set a zero tolerance level for these
62 The program continues today, but with uneven compliance. FDA reports in 1987 cited nine states out of 23 for non-compliance due to lack of water quality surveys, but these states supplied 54% of the shellfish consumed in the U.S. See U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, The Federal Fish Inspection Act and a Mandatory Seafood Inspection Program Hearings, IOI st Congress, 1st Session 24 October 1989.
63 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Fish Inspection Legislation: Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment on S. 296, S. 700, S. 1528, 92nd Congress, 1st Session, 20-21 May 1971.
64 Weight Watchers advocated eating five portions of seafood a week, but members were eating up to ten cans of tuna a week to lose more weight. 76
65 contaminants. Under this legal definition, canned, smoked and frozen cooked seafood
66 containing any level of carcinogen was adulterated. However, fresh or frozen raw seafood containing the same levels of carcinogens was not adulterated because this definition of additive did not apply to raw agricultural products. This placed accountability with the frozen seafood industry, which by the late 1960s had finally found a market, as I will discuss later.
The US Congress created a specific definition of adulterated fish to cover industrial pollutants that required the FDA and the new Environmental Protection
67 Agency (EPA) to develop methods for testing fishery products for toxic chemicals. In conjunction with this, Congress tasked the agencies to create a list of hazardous polluting substances and establish tolerance levels for human consumption, which they did
68 throughout the 1970s. However, these efforts and tests were still governed by the existing inspection system, which meant the seafood industry policed itself in preventing carcinogens from entering the supply chain. More importantly, Congress and the
65 Sarah Vogel, "From 'the Dose Makes the Poison' to the 'Timing Makes the Poison': Conceptualizing Risk in the Synthetic Age," Environmental History 13 (2008).
66 For the legalities of this, see Richard Gutting, A Practical Guide to the Regulation ofSeafood in the United States (New Jersey: Umer Barry Publications, 2006).
67 Fish Inspection Legislation: Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment on S. 296, S. 700, S. 1528. Poisonous and deleterious substances were divided into "added" and "not-added" forms of adulteration under the FDCA despite the objections of the FDA and scientists.
68 Ibid. 77 industry continued to view chemical contaminants as an inevitable outcome of economic
69 progress.
Fish: A Crop of Nature
Between 1940 and 1971, representatives of the seafood industry and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries often reminded legislators that "fish are crops ofnature."70 As one of the last wild caught foods, fish presented economic as well as food safety risks that challenged two key aspects of our dominant American foodview: abundance and consistency. States managed fisheries as a common property natural resource governed by the belief that the ocean's resources were inexhaustible. 71 However, this did not make the harvest of the ocean's resources predictable. The diversity of fish caught and the unpredictability of the harvests (production) coupled with competing state management regimes made the seafood industry unique and distinctly regional, but also highly decentralized along America's coastlines. Combined, these factors shaped the perception of risk in the fisheries and seafood industries as both natural and uncontrollable.
The uncertainties of the fishing industry presented a daunting set of variables for an industrialized food system. First, uniformity was not intrinsic to fisheries or seafood
69 Sarah Vogel argues that the prevailing assumption that risk was relative to level of exposure helped to produce the idea that chemical contamination was an inevitable outcome of economic progress. See Vogel, "From 'the Dose Makes the Poison' to the 'Timing Makes the Poison': Conceptualizing Risk in the Synthetic Age."
70 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, The Wholesome Fish and Fishery Products Act of 1969: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on S. 1092, 91st Congress, 1, 2, 14 July 1969, 98.
71 See Taylor, Making Salmon: an Environmental History ofthe Northwest Fisheries Crisis; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy. 78 processing. Whereas chicken is chicken, seafood represents over 300 edible species of different shapes, textures, tastes, protein structures, and even names for the same fish.
For example, red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) is also known as redfish, channel bass, and spottail bass leading to confusion and marketing problems, as the 1934 NRA report pointed out:
The multiplicity of species available [and] the confusion regarding common names under which they are offered for sale all contribute to making the intelligent buying of fish by the consumer a difficult task. 72
The variation in species corresponds to different technologies to catch, process, and preserve them based on their habitat, body shape, and specific protein structures.
However, seafood proteins are shorter and lighter than other proteins, making seafood decompose faster. 73 In addition, fish muscle also contains and absorbs more moisture than meat or chicken, making it an excellent medium for bacterial growth and cross- contamination. These biophysical traits represent specific risks that differ species to species that are exacerbated by the distances and length of time fishermen are out at sea and how fish are handled from harvest to consumption (See Table 3).
Second, the seafood industry is characterized by large fluctuations in harvest on a daily basis, but also over time due to seasonality, the mobility of fish, weather, and the gear used. The unpredictability of the harvest and the seasonality of many fisheries create variances in production ranging from gluts to scarcity. These uncertainties
72 National Recovery Administration, Recommendations from the Consumer's Advisory Board of the NRA for the Revision ofthe Fisheries Industry Code with Reference to Standards, Quality, Grading, and Labeling Fresh and Canned Fish, Report #3.
73 Becky Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry," Economic Geography 79, no. 1 (2003). 79
Table 3. Biological, Microbiological and Physical Hazards of Seafood
Salmonella, Staphyloccoccus, all E. coli, Listeria, Clostridium
Source: Data from U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Foodborne Pathogenic Microorganisms and Natural Toxins Handbook. Washington DC: Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 2005, Available from http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~mow/intro.html (accessed 11 November 2005). reverberate through the processing and distribution sectors affecting work schedules and investment. The hearing testimonies and reports on the industry between 1940 and 1971 describe US seafood processing factories operating on flexible, unpredictable and seasonal schedules. Packing houses operated twenty-four hours a day when the supply was good and reduced hours when supplies are low, or even closed for months at a time when the fish was out of season. For this reason, Congress exempted the seafood industry from the 1938 wage and hour laws in the Fair Labor Standards Act, institutionalizing a flexible, and highly feminized, labor force paid on the piece-rate system.74 Seasonal work and small-scale production led to limited investments in new
74 U. S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Bills to Amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to Continue in Effect the Exemptions for Shellfish Processing as 80 technology or marketing for American processors, especially as most fish were sold "in the round," or as fresh whole fish. 75 Congress, states, and the federal fisheries agency understood the diversity of species, unpredictable harvests, and flexible schedules as inherent traits of the fishing and seafood industries.
Finally, the seafood industry was as geographically dispersed as fish were diverse in species. 76 Seafood processing factories operated along most of the coastlines in larger cities but also small rural coastal areas where fishing was the primary economy and state and federal inspectors rarely ventured. Additionally, factories ranged in size from small, family-owned plants specializing in one species to larger factories that processed several indigenous species and relied on local fleets that ranged from two-man vessels to five ton ships. The first diesel powered trawler appeared in the US fleet in 1905, increasing harvests of New England groundfish.77 However, after World War II the fleet remained small and inefficient compared to the modernized and state subsidized factory trawlers of
Japan, the Soviet Union, Canada, and Iceland. 78 These foreign fleets appeared off the
Alaskan and New England coasts in the early 1950s and increased their fishing efforts
Contained in Such Act Prior to the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961: Hearing Before the Special Subcommittee on Labor HR. 8927 and HR. 8932, 16 February 1962. This exemption lasted until 1965 when Congress required the seafood industry to comply with the hourly wage laws.
75 This is a common fmding in most fisheries studies, but see R. H. Fiedler, Trade in Fresh and Frozen Package Fish Products (Washington DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Fisheries, 1928).
76 This assessment is based on the descriptions of the industry in the hearings and reports cited.
77 Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography ofthe Fish that Changed the World (New York: Penguin, 1997).
78 For post World War II data, see Bjorn Hersoug, Svein Jentoft, and Poul Degnbol, Fisheries Development: the Institutional Challenge (The Netherlands: Eburon Press, 2004); Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy. 81 throughout the 1960s. As the United States slipped in its rank as a top fishing nation, vessels and factories were not upgraded.
Implementing a continuous inspection system for seafood meant every fish, mollusk, or crustacean that entered a factory would have to be inspected and between
1930 and 1976 US landings averaged 2.2 million metric tons.79 The sheer volume of harvests made the inspection system impractical, but also costly as the seafood industry's schedule would require overtime pay for inspectors. States with strong quality and safety codes created better products, but this did not extend accountability industry-wide:
Because the seafood industry is spread along coasts and operated by individuals more than companies, corrective measures in one area are really a penalty on that area as others continue to operate with questionable practices. These products go to market and ruin the reputation of others. 80
FDA reports between 1934 and the 1970s show that the same unsanitary practices on board vessels and at landing sites continued during these decades: boats lacked ice, polluted harbor water was used to clean the catch, and fishermen and dealers used pitch forks to unload and move fish puncturing their flesh and increasing the risk of pathogens and decomposition. Reports on factories, wholesalers, and retailers were not any better: flies, lack of bathroom and sanitization facilities, inadequate cold storage, and improper handling at all points in the supply chain. 81
79 For landing data, see Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy.
80 U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, To Promote the Free Flow ofDomestically Produced Fishery Products in Commerce: Hearing before the Subcommittee on the Committee on Commerce on S. 1852, 76th Congress, 1st Session, 13 April 1939. States with strong quality inspections included California, Florida, and eventually Alaska.
81 National Recovery Administration, Recommendations from the Consumer's Advisory Board of the NRA/or the Revision ofthe Fisheries Industry Code with Reference to Standards, Quality, Grading, 82
By 1968 the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries reported to Congress that outbreaks of botulism and hepatitis had increased over the last ten years, and that the first cases of salmonella had appeared in seafood.82 That year Lee Weddig, President of the National
Fisheries Institute (NFI, a newly formed trade association), told Congress that '"to do the job, regulation really must extend from the ocean to the store," but neither the FDA nor the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries had the authority to inspect the eighty-two thousand vessels that comprised the US fishing industry. 83 In addition, the FDA revealed that they had 700 inspectors to cover 4, 187 plants, and had inspected only thirty-six percent of the plants in the United States. 84 Despite the proliferation of micro flora on boats and processing plants, seafood hazards were balanced against the costs of inspection and the inherent risks of the industry already discussed. In other words, setting standards was based on a science-based assessment dictated by costs and the unpredictability of the industry.
Meanwhile state fisheries management policies operated under the prevailing ideology that fish populations could be made predictable and abundant through scientific
and Labeling Fresh and Canned Fish, Report #3; U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Wholesome Fish and Fishery Products Act and Assistance Needed to Implement It of I968: Hearings before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 2958 and S 3064, 90th Congress, 23-25 April 1968.
82 Wholesome Fish and Fishery Products Act and Assistance Needed to Implement It of I968: Hearings before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 2958 and S 3064.
83 Lee Weddig quoted in U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Commerce, Fishery Products Protection Act of I967: Hearings Before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 1472, 90th Congress, 20-21 July 1967, 73.
84 Wholesome Fish and Fishery Products Act and Assistance Needed to Implement It of 1968: Hearings before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 2958 and S 3064. 83 management. 85 The chief goal was to increase the capacity of fleets and thus volume to overcome the uncertainties of a wild caught product, not improve the quality of the product. Instead, states developed conflicting seafood codes for individual species or production processes with the result that grades and standards for a single species varied state by state. 86 Conflicting state management policies and the diversity of the fisheries made the seafood industry a conglomeration of hundreds of fisheries sectors often with competing interests. Seafood's status as wild game made the uncertainties of the fishing industry seem inevitable and kept the industry fragmented through state fisheries management and food standards. Seafood hazards did not raise the same dread and outrage as meat because it was not the center of the US diet and food system. As we shall now see, these factors not only inhibited the concentration of the seafood industry, but insured that a domestic quality convention prevailed, even after the development of quick freeze technology and the rise of the frozen seafood industry.
Fish Sticks, Accountability and Consolidation
Without national standards, the seafood industry did not have a formal accountability mechanism-a way to guarantee trust and embed production and distribution in universal rules and forms of verification that governed personal relationships. This became problematic with the emergence of the frozen seafood
85 Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy.
86 Fishery Products Protection Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 1472. 84 industry in 1925 and the development of nationally branded fish in the 1950s.87 As a result, between the 1930s and 1970, the US seafood industry divided between regional industries characterized by small, family owned processors with little consolidation and a decentralized, yet consolidated frozen seafood industry. However, although freezing preserved fish in high volumes, this did not guarantee mass markets especially without national standards.
Beginning in the early 1900s, the international demand for American salted cod began to decline while American consumers had never developed a taste for the product. 88 Instead, we preferred to eat fresh fish and an average of sixty-two percent of the US landings went to the fresh market while up to eighty percent of the canned fish packed in the United States was exported to England and France.89 However, cod, haddock, and other pelagic fishing fleets had increased their harvesting capacity through diesel powered trawlers, and the seafood industry began searching for new ways to
s7 Details on the development of the frozen seafood industry from Paul Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick," unpublished paper, Colby College, 2005; Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography ofthe Fish that Changed the World; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of US. Marine Fisheries Policy.
ssAs Kurlansky details, the US salted cod industry collapsed after the end of slavery in the Caribbean, which had been its only market, because the quality of product was too low to supply the European market. Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography ofthe Fish that Changed the World. Landings of haddock and cod increased 83% between 1922 and 1927, Fiedler, Trade in Fresh and Frozen Package Fish Products.
s9 The US canned primarily salmon, tuna and sardines. Charles L. Cutting, Fish Saving: a History ofFish Processing.from Ancient to Modern Times (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956); U. S. Tariff Commission, Canned Fish: a Review ofProduction, Foreign Trade, Potential Supplies ofRaw Materials and Recommendations Concerning Operation ofthe Industry under War Conditions (Washington: Tariff Commission, 1942). 85 package fresh fish. 90 The fresh fish filet appeared on the market in 1921 followed by the frozen fish brick in 1925 when Clarence Birdseye perfected his quick freezing method with technical assistance from the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries. The Bureau encouraged processors to sell frozen fish steaks and filets to make seafood more convenient and sanitary, and to establish branding on the packages-an opportunity that whole fish did not afford. 91 General Foods, a flour and cereal company, purchased
Birdseye in 1929, increasing the company's fleet size and processing capacity, and
Gorton' s of Gloucester expanded its fleets and factories, as well. 92 By the 1930s both companies produced frozen "fish bricks"-slabs of haddock, cod, and sole sent to market as frozen square bricks that housewives sliced into portions and cooked. Before the
Depression, 128 companies produced frozen fillets that were sold through five hundred and sixteen retailers, mostly dairy and ice cream stores which were the only stores with frozen food cases.93 After the Depression, the industry began promoting frozen fish filets to the restaurant industry because the individual portions kept costs low.94 Despite the convenience of the new product, the frozen seafood industry needed to overcome two problems: the lack of market for the large surplus of frozen "fish brick" and the
90 U. S. Tariff Commission, Canned Fish: a Review ofProduction, Foreign Trade, Potential Supplies of Raw Materials and Recommendations Concerning Operation ofthe Industry under War Conditions.
91 To Provide for Economic Studies ofthe Fishery Industry, Market News Service, and Orderly Marketing of Fishery Products: Hearing on S. 3584.
92 Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."
93 Fiedler, Trade in Fresh and Frozen Package Fish Products.
94 Ibid; E.W. Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography ofan Industry (New York: Cahners Publishing, 1963). 86 perception by consumers that frozen food meant spoiled food. 95 This consumer perception was reinforced when the FDA began sampling frozen seafood for filth and
decomposition, seizing large amounts of products.96 The problem, according to Birdseye and Gortons, was accountability-numerous companies from different states had entered the market with questionable quality standards along with distributors who failed to handle the product properly.
In order to create a new market and raise the price of frozen fish, Birdseye and
Gorton's felt all seafood had to be inspected prior to processing, freezing, and shipping.97
In 1940, they sponsored the first bill calling for a national seafood inspection system modeled on the meat industry, arguing that a government certification label would tell the consumer that the fish was high quality when it left the factory. But the FDA felt that the
agency "could not place a stamp of approval on fish which is sent to market in fresh or
frozen form [because] a fresh or frozen product can easily spoil or become damaged in transit or storage. "98 This concern stemmed from the highly fragmented structure of the
fresh seafood industry spread across thousands of miles of rural coastlines. The risks
95 Fish sticks were perfectly square because the filets were frozen in large slabs and cut with a ban saw. The perception developed during the 1930s when companies used cold storage to hold fish that was on the verge of spoiling. See Gabriella Petrick, "The Arbiters of Taste: Producers, Consumers and the Industrialization of Taste in America, 1900-1960" (PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, 2006). For more on the fish brick and the later development offish sticks, see Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."
96 Mark Law. "How Do Regulators Regulate? Enforcement of the Pure Food and Drugs Act, 1907- 1938," Journal ofLaw, Economics, and Organization 22, no. 2 (2005).
97 Data on this bill from U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Inspection and Grading ofFish and Fishery Products: Hearings before the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, 16 January, 7-8 February 1940.
98 Ibid., 21. 87 associated with the unpredictability and diversity of the catch discussed earlier only reinforced the geographic isolation of the companies and the conflicting state laws for standards and fisheries management. Thus seafood quality and safety could only be guaranteed through personal relationships and long histories of doing business, or by individual states with strict standards. 99
During hearing testimony in 1940, representatives from the Bureau of Fisheries and owners of smaller seafood companies described the fragmented industry, listing the large number of fishing vessels, landing sites, and packing houses that comprised the
U.S. industry (See Table 4). Congressmen and representatives from federal agencies argued that mandatory inspections for each plant would be costly:
This bill is going to make it imperative to have an inspector in and around every little town of Podunk, and out-of-the-way place. And I cannot see but what this thing may cost us a great deal of money and here we are constantly hearing the cry to "balance the budget."100
Instead, the government argued that states could inspect factories more cheaply and efficiently and Chesapeake processors agreed, stating that factories were so far apart "it would be almost impossible to inspect every fish produced" and that waiting for an inspector to arrive would actually increase decomposition problems and product loss. 101
99 At the time, the California canned seafood industry represented a model program for state, mandatory standards. See Arthur McEvoy, The Fisherman's Problem: Ecology and Law in the California Fisheries, 185 0-1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
100 Inspection and Grading ofFish and Fishery Products: Hearings before the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 13.
lOl Ibid., 75. 88
Table 4. Location of Seafood Packing Plants in the United States, 1940
Fish Production in Number Number State Pounds of Plants of Cities
Total 4,332,299,000 2,723 720
Above: Note that Maryland has the most seafood plants of any state and the total number of plants on the Bay is 559. Source: Data from U.S. Congress. House of Representatives. Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries. Inspection and Grading ofFish and Fishery Products Hearings before the United States House Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, 76th Congress, 3rd Session, 16 January, 7-8 February 1940. 89
Congressmen from the Mid-West and Chesapeake packers agreed that mandatory programs would "lead to a merger and monopoly of only the larger packing companies" because smaller fishermen and processors could not afford to pay for an inspector, but retailers would not accept their product if it was not inspected.102
In response, Birdseye's representatives testified that that the FDA seizures penalized the processor when the problems could have occurred on the fishing vessel or during distribution and storage. 103 In 1934, the FDA had determined that most problems
"lay in the inability of the packer to compel the fishermen to adopt proper practices" for handling the catch before they reached the packing house. 104 This lack of control over the fishermen could only be solved through standards that would divide and value their catch based on its condition. Birdseye also pointed out that fresh and frozen seafood circulated through different distribution systems. Fresh seafood left the factory for a seafood wholesaler or consignment house, fish auction house, or large market, such as the
Fulton Fish Market in New York, where retailers and restaurants purchased fresh seafood. However, adequate distribution and storage systems for frozen foods had not been developed, and railroads and retailers did not want to be held accountable.105 The only exception was General Foods, which had the capital to distribute freezer cases to the newest retailers-grocery stores-and was the only company controlling its distribution
102 Ibid., 99.
103 Ibid.4-15.
104 Lee, "The Enforcement Provisions of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act," 88.
105 Petrick, "The Arbiters of Taste: Producers, Consumers and the Industrialization of Taste in America, 1900-1960". 90 system, much like the meat industry. 106 At stake was the brand reputation of Birdseye and General Foods, however, Congress felt the costs outweighed the benefits.
Consumption of fresh and frozen seafood increased during World War II due to rationing and pricing regulations, but Americans returned to eating meat after the war .107
The frozen seafood industry and the Bureau remained convinced that the only way to increase seafood consumption was through higher quality products guaranteed through national standards and developing products that were more convenient to the consumer.
In 1953, Birdseye introduced the frozen fish stick-a perfectly rectangular piece of fish coated in batter and deep fried. 108 The fish stick was hailed as "the industry's greatest contribution to modem living" and marketing campaigns highlighted its uniformity and convenience.109 Gorton's and other companies, such as Mrs. Paul's, quickly launched their own version of the fish stick and immediately switched to year round production.
The other product introduced at the same time was frozen breaded shrimp, produced by
King and Prince, as well as Gorton's and Mrs. Paul's. 11° Frozen seafood companies developed their own branded products, but these companies also began to pack frozen seafood products under private grocery labels. 111 However, branding required a
106 Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."
107 Petrick, "The Arbiters of Taste: Producers, Consumers and the Industrialization of Taste in America, 1900-1960".
108 Data on fish stick compiled from Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
109 Quoted in Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."
110 Leslie Faulkenberry, The Story ofKing and Prince Seafood Corporation (Brunswick GA: King and Prince Seafood Corporation, 1999); Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography ofan Industry.
111 Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography ofan Industry. 91 consistently high quality product and quality standards to insure the value of the product and the trademark.
The passage of the Fish and Wildlife Act in 1956 finally gave the Bureau of
Commercial Fisheries the authority to create quality and safety standards and certification labels. 112 The Bureau established the Voluntary Inspection Program and borrowed the grades used for beef-A, B, and C-and created standards for sizes, weights and other quality attributes for a variety of species used in the frozen seafood industry. They also established sanitation standards and inspection systems in partnership with seafood companies. Rather than a mandatory system, these standards were voluntary and companies paid for the service. The Act also authorized the agency to develop marketing programs for seafood for the first time in the industry's history. 113
Gorton's was the first to adopt the new inspection system and began a decade of expansion, purchasing smaller frozen seafood companies and increasing the consolidation of the frozen seafood industry.114 By 1967 forty frozen seafood packers used the system, creating a limited industrial quality convention. 115 The fresh and canned seafood industries, on the other hand, continued to use either state standards, or trade association standards. But as the frozen seafood industry expanded in the 1950s and 1960s, the US
112 Data on the standards from Thomas Billy, Former Director of the Office of Seafood, USFDA. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digital recording, 19 August 2008, Chevy Chase, MD; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
113 Billy. Fonner Director of the Office of Seafood. USFDA. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digital recording; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
114 Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy; Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography ofan Industry.
115 Fishery Products Protection Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 1472. 92 fishing industry and harvests did not. After World War II, several countries invested in large-scale trawling fleets and floating factories that swept up tons of fish and processed the catch at sea. 116 Between the 1950s and 1960s the world's total catch increased by nine percent annually, but the US catch decreased. 117 This forced companies like
Gorton's and Birdseye to purchase imported seafood, especially fish filets and shrimp.118
By the mid-1950s frozen seafood companies sold their fleets of fishing boats, moved out of Gloucester and other traditional fishing areas, and contracted with importing companies.119
Despite the fish stick's convenience and iconic image in American food history, the product actually did not sell very well to grocery retailers, and instead frozen fish filets and breaded shrimp found their market in restaurantsY0 Throughout the 1950s and
1960s restaurants expanded in the United States through franchising, creating chain restaurants such as Howard Johnson's and McDonalds. 121 The Golden Arches introduced the filet o' fish sandwich in 1962 to boost slumping Friday sales in Catholic areas and
116 Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
117 Hersoug, Jentoft, and Degnbol, Fisheries Development: the Institutional Challenge.
118 Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."; Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
119 Josephson, "Technology Finds a Safe Harbor: A Brief History of the Fish Stick."General Foods closed Birdseye's seafood operations in 1959.
12°Fish sticks also became part of the school lunch program through the USDA.
121 Restaurant data from John Jakie and Keith Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 93 began buying frozen fish portions.122 By 1964, sales for frozen fish portions to restaurants surpassed retail fish stick sales and shrimp became the largest dollar earner in frozen seafood, at $240 million. McDonalds was joined by Arthur Treachers and Long
John Silvers in 1969, introducing Americans to the British mainstay of fish and chips and expanding the market for frozen fish filets. These restaurants required suppliers to be inspected by the Bureau, and only purchased Grade A filets. 123
However, the most significant changes occurred between 1968 and 1971. In
1968, General Mills purchased Gorton's and then bought Red Lobster, a six unit Florida restaurant chain, in 1971. 124 General Mills made the batter, Gorton' s supplied the fish and Red Lobster created a market for standardized deep fried fish as General Mills expanded the chain nationally. In creating a vertically integrated value-added seafood company with restaurant outlets for its products, General Mills created the model of consolidation for the seafood industry. As Red Lobster expanded, the restaurant consolidated purchasing into one department buying seafood for all the restaurants.
Buyers sourced seafood from other countries as well as from Gorton' s and large frozen food companies such as King and Prince.125 Consolidated purchasing emerged in the restaurant industry in 1968 when eight regional frozen food wholesalers merged to form
122 Filet o'fish data from Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography ofan Industry.
123 Billy, Former Director of the Office of Seafood, USFDA. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digital recording.
124 Jakie and Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.
125 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, A Bill to Reauthorize the Magnuson Fishery and Conservation Act and Mandatory Seafood Inspection to Protect the Consumer: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Fisheries Management on HR. 780, 103rd Congress, 1st Session, 10 September 1993. 94
Sysco Corporation. 126 These wholesalers had served the retail industry, but grocery stores increasingly created their own storage and distribution systems. The regional wholesalers recognized that growing national chain restaurants would need a distributor to service multi-unit accounts. Sysco began distributing food and equipment to the growing restaurant industry, expanding into other institutional sales such as cafeterias, and hospitals and required frozen seafood to be inspected and certified, including imported seafood.
In summary, by the late 1960s, consolidation in the seafood industry was limited to species that could be frozen, battered and fried and therefore much of the industry remained regional along with seafood cuisine. Quality and safety standards in the industry amounted to a patchwork of voluntary codes and certification programs that covered specific fish species (molluskan shellfish) or production processes (like freezing). Although an industrial quality convention had emerged through the Bureau's
Voluntary Inspection Program, the fresh seafood industry relied on states and trade associations to create and enforce standards for each sector of the seafood industry in the absence of mandatory national standards. Often states created their own regulations and criteria, institutionalizing competing concepts of quality and safety. The result was a highly specialized, often localized seafood industry with differentiated products in which standards for quality and safety varied not only state to state, but between companies and even within the same species of fish. For most of the seafood industry, quality and safety
126 Data on Sysco from E. Bruce Geelhoed, The Thrill ofSuccess: the Story ofSYSCO/Frost-Pack Food Services, Incorporated, ed. Sandra Marsh, Ball State University Business History Series vol. 2 (Muncie, IN: Bureau of Business Research, College of Business and Department of History, 1983); Williams, Frozen Foods: Biography of an Industry. 95 had to be established interpersonally at each point in the supply chain through the reputation of the processor, wholesaler, or retailer, and guaranteed through long term relationships and personal trust, not a certification label. In contrast to meat and frozen fish filets, fresh seafood followed a domestic quality convention. However, the debates over seafood inspection shifted in the late 1960s as outbreaks and imports increased, and carcinogens were discovered in fish. The frozen seafood industry and restaurants were moving toward international standards and away from the continuous inspection system.
From National to Global Standards
The continuous inspection system remained the model for food standards and accountability by the late 1960s, but for sectors of the seafood industry and the FDA it was clear that this system would not meet the unique challenges of the fisheries and seafood processing industries. Seafood hazards started with marine environmental quality and carried through the capture, processing, and distribution of fish and could not be detected through visual or sensory inspection. The seasonality and high volume of landings, the mix of small and large-scale fleets and processors, and the geographically dispersed industry made inspecting every fish in every factory fmancially and physically impractical. Beyond the material challenges of seafood, the continuous inspection system arose from a values-based approach that balanced risks against dread and outrage connected to meat-a food that held greater cultural value in the American diet and imagination, as well as greater economic value. These values had shaped the understanding of food hazards and risks in 1906 through the definition of adulteration, but starting in the 1950s these understandings began to shift from adulteration of food to 96 food safety-determining the risk of contamination rather than just locating contaminated batches of food. 127 But determining the risk of contamination required a new system of verification and methods of measurement-new forms of trust and accountability would have to be institutionalized not only at the national level, but also internationally. In the
United States, the seafood industry would pioneer this change as it moved closer toward an industrial quality convention and American foodview.
Modernizing Seafood Safety
New concerns over the presence of carcinogens in fish led Congress to propose numerous bills requiring a mandatory continuous inspection program for seafood between 1967 and 1971. 128 This disproportionally affected the frozen seafood industry, which sourced seafood from 116 different countries by 1967. 129 However, the FDA held no authority to inspect factories in other countries, so seafood companies randomly inspected the foreign processors themselves. 130 While Congress attempted to legislate a continuous inspection system, the FDA, the industry, and the Consumer Protection and
Environmental Health Services (CPEHS later the EPA) began to reconsider the merits of
127 Lawrence Busch, "Grades and Standards in the Social Construction of Safe Food," in The Politics ofFood, ed. Marianne Elisabeth Lien and Brigitte Nerlich (New York: Berg, 2004), 164.
128Fish Inspection Legislation: Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment on S. 296, s. 700, s. 1528.
129 Fishery Pro_ducts Protection Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 1472.
130 The USDA did have this authority, granted by Congress, as part of amendments to the Meat Inspection Act. But the FDA did not hold such authority even in the US. Michael Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy (Washington DC: Island Press, 2002). 97 the continuous inspection system in relation to seafood hazards and the growing trade in imported seafood.
In 1967, Elizabeth Guhring of the American Seafood Distributors Association
(ASDA), which represented the largest seafood importers and manufacturers in the country, recast the debate in terms of global regulation rather than just national standards aimed at the domestic industry. 131 Guhring's organization sought to ensure the continued free trade of seafood and argued that national seafood quality legislation would be a trade barrier, hindering market expansion. She characterized the global seafood trade as increasingly risky due to treaties, conservation efforts, and boundaries that inhibited the free trade of fish, and stated that ''the only real hope for so many problems of the fishing industry, worldwide, is going to be in the international organizations."132 She recommended a regulatory program that would be administered on a global level by the
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Two years later (1969), the National
Fisheries Institute (NFI), the FDA, ASDA, and the CPEHS collectively argued that seafood's unique hazards and characteristics (including import issues) defied traditional inspection systems and required a new approach. NFI stated:
The concept of continuous inspection in regards to any area of the food business is archaic, obsolete and it does not take into consideration the great advances made by the scientists in our federal and state labs. 133
131 Fishery Products Protection Act of 1967: Hearings Before the Consumer Subcommittee on S. 1472.
132 Ibid., 100.
133 The Wholesome Fish and Fishery Products Act of 1969: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on S. 1092, 133. 98
In other words, continuous inspection was not scientific or modem enough to address the hazards of seafood and its unique qualities, nor could it be applied to the global trade in seafood. The CPEHS argued that the responsibility and accountability for producing and marketing safe and wholesome quality seafood still rested with industry and that government's role was to ensure compliance.134 These roles were not that different from those established by the FDCA in 1938. Instead, the change rested in the methods for quality control and accountability: science-based risk assessment and auditing of production records, not inspection of products.
All parties proposed implementing the "Continuous Surveillance Inspection" system. The new system required: the development of minimum standards for chemical, microbiological and organoleptic inspection of vessels, factories, and distribution systems; the initial inspection of all of these facilities based on the standards as a validation process; the certification of those establishments that passed; continued inspection at regular intervals throughout the year to verify compliance; and increased record keeping by companies on production processes, which would then be audited. 135
Those companies that did not pass the initial inspection would receive training and be inspected more frequently until they were certified. Imported seafood would also be certified for compliance under a similar system in which foreign governments would conduct the certification process after the United States reviewed the country's food
134 Ibid., 183.
135 Data on the system from Ibid. 99 safety laws. Accountability would be guaranteed through random sampling of products at US customs and periodic audits of records and operations in the country.
In 1971, Congress again proposed that the seafood industry adopt the continuous inspection system, and again all parties counter-proposed the "Continuous Surveillance
Inspection" system. However, the FDA's approach now more fully embraced an auditing methodology, which they characterized as "surveillance" and justified to Congress by explaining:
As long as you have assurance that somebody else is doing an adequate job of control, you don't have to invest as much money in doing it yourself. It's like the distinction between a bookkeeper and an auditor. 136
This approach represents the first move toward a science-based risk assessment and auditing system, foreshadowing the changes to come in the 1990s with HACCP.
However, this was not a coincidence.
The FDA and industry recommendations mirror HACCP because Pillsbury had publicly introduced the system in 1971 at the First National Food Protection
Conference.137 The Pillsbury Company developed HACC,:P in 1959 to produce food for the space program because NASA required 100 percent quality assurance that the astronauts' food was free of pathogens, toxins, chemicals, and physical hazards. 138
136 Fish Inspection Legislation: Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Environment on S. 296, S. 700, S. 1528, 191.
137 National Conference on Food Protection, Proceedings of the First National Coriference on Food Protection (Denver Colorado: U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, 1971).
138 Data on Pillsbury's development ofHACCP from H.E. Bauman, "The Origin and Concept of HACCP" in HACCP in Meat, Poultry and Fish Processing: Advances in Meat Research Series, ed. A.M. Pearson and T.R. Dutson (London: Blackie Academic Professional, 1996); Garrett, Hudak-Roos, and Ward, "Implementation of the HACCP Program by the Fresh and Processed Seafood Industry." 100
Pillsbury realized that the current US methods-continuous and periodic inspection systems, random sampling and end product testing-were insufficient to the task.
Instead, Pillsbury had to develop a preventative system that gave them "control over the raw materials, the process, the environment, the personnel, storage, and distribution starting as early in the system as possible" and made each ingredient traceable back to its point of originB9 The company's microbiologists, together with scientists at the U.S.
Army, developed a network approach to food safety that emphasized science-based risk assessments to identify and prevent hazards based on the foods being processed and the actual production environment. The system also required extensive record keeping to trace ingredients back to suppliers and demonstrate that risks were controlled during production. According to Richard Bauman, Pillsbury's chief microbiologist who developed HACCP, the company required that "the latitude and longitude where the salmon used in the salmon loaf were caught was known, as well as the name of the ship" in order to hold suppliers accountable through traceability and auditing of company's records. 140
Attendees and participants at the conference included the FDA and representatives from the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO), microbiologists, and major food corporations, including General Mills. 141 Participants recognized several trends that increased the probability of microbiological contamination
139 Bauman, "The Origin and Concept ofHACCP ", 2.
140 Ibid. 3
141 Data on the conference from National Conference on Food Protection, Proceedings ofthe First National Conference on Food Protection. 101 in food: the increased consumption of fresh and raw food, and the revolution in food processing, service, and retail facilities along with the growth of chain restaurants. The attendees also recognized that maintaining existing international markets and expanding the food industry was "dependent upon national product standards giving way to international standards" to facilitate the free flow of food across borders. 142 As such, their final recommendation was to adopt Pillsbury's HACCP because it would adapt quickly to new markets and new products. The remainder of the decade saw individual corporations establish their own HACCP programs while the WHO, the F AO, and the
U.S. FDA developed guidelines and established microbiological testing procedures, tolerance levels, time and temperature standards for different foods, and standards on sanitation and equipment. 143 These guidelines were institutionalized as part of the Codex
Alimentarius, an international food standard setting body jointly sponsored by the WHO and FA0.144
142 Ibid., 135.
143 Hoffmann, "Getting to Risk-Based Food Safety Regulatory Management: Lessons from Federal Environmental Policy." See for example, J. Lee, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Applications to the Seafood Industry (Corvallis OR: Oregon State University, Sea Grant College Program, 1977), ORESU-H-77; UN World Health Organization, Fish and Shellfish Hygiene: Report ofa WHO Expert Committee Convened in Cooperation with FAD (Geneva: WHO Expert Committee on Fish and Shellfish Hygiene, 1974), Technical Paper No. 550; UN World Health Organization, Microbiological Aspects of Food Hygiene: Report ofa WHO Expert Committee with the Participation ofFAO (Geneva: Expert Committee on Microbiological Aspects of Food Hygiene, 1976), Technical Report No. 598.
144 Codex is comprised of a variety of committees, whose members represent different countries and their industries, but the Committee on Food Hygiene is one of the oldest and the United States has served as permanent chair since the committee's inception in the 1960s. See Salter, Mandated Science: Science and Scientists in the Making ofStandards. 102
None of the seafood safety bills debated by Congress between 1967 and 1971 passed into law. 145 However, my research shows that a nascent movement to modernize all food safety practice and policy emerged at both the national and international levels in order to facilitate trade. From the late 1970s into the 1980s science-based risk assessment was increasingly linked with reducing food safety costs by outsourcing them to the private sector in a series of commissioned studies by the US government. Reports such as An Evaluation ofthe Role ofMicrobiological Criteria for Foods and Food
Ingredients published by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) recommended
HACCP and audit-based quality assurance, legitimating the methodologies and guidelines already established by Codex. 146 Scientists and the seafood industry were convinced ofHACCPs benefits as a series of changes in fisheries management, the restaurant industry, and markets converged with the seafood scares of the 1980s and
1990s.
Modernizing the Seafood Industry
In opening statements for the Consumer Seafood Safety Act, Senator Hollings asked, "If it is not safe to swim in the water, is it safe to eat the fish and shellfish taken from it?"147 The Senator's question reveals that little had changed regarding the sources
145 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Consumer Seafood Safety Act of 1990: Report to Accompany H.R. 2511, IOlst Congress, 2nd session, 1990.
146National Academy of Sciences, An Evaluation ofthe Role ofMicrobiological Criteria for Foods and Food Ingredients (Washington DC: National Academy of Sciences, 1985).
147 The Consumer Seafood Safety Act: Hearing before the National Ocean Policy Study on S. 2538, 1. 103 of risk in the seafood industry. The National Academy of Sciences landmark study
Seafood Safety showed that the majority of health risks associated with seafood still originated in marine environmental contamination followed by cross contamination during the processing stages and that current inspection systems would not address these problems. 148 However, environmental degradation remained an unchangeable and acceptable risk resulting from industrial society, and the FDA and seafood industry were more concerned about accountability. The NFI representative testified:
We do recognize that nature is no longer pristine. Residues of an industrial society are present in the environment and fish at the top of the marine life food chain, are particularly susceptible. We, as an industry, cannot be held accountable for this and we need a seafood safety program that scientifically prevents these hazards from entering the supply chain.149
The FDA and NFI argued that consumer assurance of seafood safety would only result from science-based risk assessments that could be applied to both domestic and imported seafood equally. They recommended Congress adopt the Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Points food safety system-HACCP.
Government reports and other testimony between 1986 and 1995 indicated that the seafood industry continued to be characterized by small, fragmented operations due to the uncontrollable economic risks of the seafood industry. 150 These reports actually seemed shocked to find that the industry remained "independent and fragmented in
148 Ahmed Farid, ed., Seafood Safety: Committee on the Evaluation ofFishery Products (Washington DC: National Academy Press, Food and Nutrition Board, 1991).
149 The Consumer Seafood Safety Act: Hearing before the National Ocean Policy Study on S. 2538, 49.
150 U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Fisheries Management, Statement by Thomas J. Billy, Director, Office ofSeafood, Food and Drug Administration, 1st session, 23 June 1993. 104 nature" where fishing and processing operations varied dramatically in size with many remaining regional and tied to a single species while multinational conglomerates were found only in frozen seafood and canned tuna. 151 According to the reports, the risk of dealing with uncertain fish supplies had discouraged vertical integration and low rates of capital investment, while the lack of national quality and safety standards had depressed prices for US fish in world markets.152 All of these characteristics made the US seafood industry appear traditional as compared with the rest of the US food system. 153 But the seafood scares and debates over HACCP between 1987 and 1995 also show that several aspects of the industry, and therefore its risk, had changed.
Fisheries: Nationalization, Imports and Aquaculture
Three significant changes occurred in fisheries management and production between 1976 and the mid 1980s. First, the United States nationalized its fisheries in
1976 through the Magnuson-Stevens Act, which extended jurisdiction over fisheries resources 200 miles off the US coastline and federalized fisheries management.154 The creation of this Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in effect privatized the fisheries by
151 U.S. General Accounting Office, Briefing Report to the Honorable Ted Stevens, US. Senate on Seafood Marketing: Opportunities to Improve the US. Position (Washington DC: General Accounting Office, 1986), 10.
152 Ibid.
153 Ibid.
154 Data on EEZ from Becky Mansfield, "Property Regime or Development Policy? Explaining Growth in the US Pacific Ground Fish Fishery," Professional Geographer 53, no. 3 (2001); Becky Mansfield, "Neoliberalism in the Oceans: "Rationalization," Property Rights, and the Commons Question," inNeoliberal Environments: False Promises and Unnatural Consequences, ed. Nik Heynen et al. (New York: Routledge, 2007). 105 removing the foreign fleets and encouraging the entry of thousands of investors and fishermen in the US fishing industry, particularly in Alaska. As factory trawlers became tax shelters, the US fleet was soon as over capitalized as its European and Japanese counterparts and also overharvesting US waters.155 The United Nations enacted a similar statute in 1982 that established EEZs for all coastal countries, in effect nationalizing most of the world's fisheries. Second, although America had been a net seafood importer since
1965, by the 1980s seafood had emerged as an NTC and development strategy for developing countries.156 The nationalization of fisheries under the EEZ reinforced this
EOI strategy, and countries like Thailand upgraded their production to include value added processes, such as frozen shrimp party trays. Finally, aquacultured shrimp and fish emerged on the market promising agro-industrial values of abundance, consistency, and year round availability. 157
The hearings over HACCP show that Congress and consumers feared the United
States was importing environmental adulteration from developing countries. Because the health risks associated with seafood were primarily environmental, the National
Academies recommended that regulatory action start as close to the point of harvest as possible, which meant requiring developing countries not only to implement a system, but also to share the risk and higher levels of blame for adulterated seafood. 158
155 Weber, From Abundance to Scarcity: A History of U.S. Marine Fisheries Policy.
156 On early seafood imports see, Ibid.
157 U. S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Chairman, Subcommittee on Commerce, Consumer and Monetary Affairs, Committee on Government Operations, House ofRepresentatives Seafood Safety: Seriousness ofProblems and Efforts to Protect Consumers (Washington DC, 1988).
158 Farid, ed., Seafood Safety: Committee on the Evaluation ofFishery Products. 106
Markets: Standardization and Differentiation
Marketing and purchasing in the restaurant industry had changed as well, and the number of restaurants increased fifteen percent as did the corporatization of restaurants through mergers and corporate development groups. 159 Restaurants were a main location for lifestyle branding-selling products by attracting consumers to a product through a way of life--which had emerged in the 1960s, but by the 1980s the target market had shifted to upper class consumers. 160 The gentrification of taste made the diversity of seafood a positive attribute in the 1980s, as one seafood executive recalled "it used to be a cod block and fish stick, but all that changed then; differentiation was based on species, cut, portion, and preparation methods." 161 Increasingly, restaurants added seafood to their menus, especially grilled seafood and regional seafood cuisines.
National distributors, such as Sysco, had emerged in the 1970s to supply national restaurant chains and by the 1980s offered programmed buying operations that allowed restaurants to source from one supplier-them. Sysco increased their frozen seafood line while Unilever and Del Monte bought major canned and fronze fish brands as a diversification strategy. 162 The problem was that these corporations, distributors, and
159 Statistics from National Restaurant Association, Restaurant Industry Numbers: 25 Year History, 1970-1995 (Washington DC: National Restaurant Association, 1998). Data on mergers and consolidations from reports in National Restaurant Association, "News and Trends," Nation's Restaurant News 1980-2000.
16°Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: the Politics of Consumption in Postwar America.
161 Anonymous Executive, Interview by Kelly Feltault at the Boston Seafood Show, 11 March 2007, Boston, MA.
162 Steve Hedlund, "Reeling in Sales: North America's Seafood Suppliers Positioned for Growth," Seafood Business, May 2007. These companies left the industry after 2000 because they were too focused on uniformity and vertical integration, according to Hedlund. 107 restaurants assumed an industrial convention existed and therefore could buy on price, or a market convention. As Tom Rippen recalled, these companies suddenly had to navigate the domestic quality convention of the US seafood industry:
Early in the 1980s when I started working with big companies, most of the buyers were trained in meat and were used to buying by the telephone. They'd call their five suppliers, "What's your price on 14/16 T-bones," or whatever, and get prices. Then they'd call the cheapest guy back and order from him. But when you start doing that with seafood, you start buying a lot ofjunk real quick. 163
The corporate newcomers did not understand seafood, which had to be standardized for national chain restaurants and accountability needed to protect the corporate reputation.
Conversely, General Mills continued to be a model for consolidation in the seafood industry. The corporation adopted HACCP in 1972 after the National
Conference, and since then its Red Lobster restaurants used HACCP as the foundation for setting corporate seafood quality and safety standards that worked with the certification system of the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). 164 The national restaurant chain established its own seafood inspection labs in different regions across the country and built their own microbiology lab where they inspected all domestic and imported seafood used in their restaurants. In the early 1980s, Red Lobster, now the largest dinner house chain in the world, pushed to make HACCP a national standard because inconsistent quality and fraudulent practices increased their costs and limited their access to seafood resources. The cumulative effect of these changes in fisheries and markets
163 Tom Rippen, Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 23 March 2007, Princess Anne, Maryland. These companies eventually divested their seafood holdings.
164 Data on Red Lobster's use ofHACCP from testimony of Red Lobster representative, A Bill to Reauthorize the Magnuson Fishery and Conservation Act and Mandatory Seafood Inspection to Protect the Consumer: Hearing before the Subcommittee on Fisheries Management on H.R. 780. 108 was to open new avenues for consolidation and expansion of the seafood industry, which made the debates over HACCP about increasing access to fisheries resources and global markets by commercializing seafood safety.
HACCP: Adding Value through Accountability
In the final act of the Uruguay round of GATT (1994), member countries enacted a baseline set of food safety standards called the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Agreement
(SPS). 165 SPS gave importing countries the right to inspect, test, and review food production and regulatory systems of producing countries to determine if their safety
systems are equivalent to the importing nation. This does not require that both regulatory systems be the same, but rather that they achieve the same results even if through different methods. Instead, the SPS stipulates that all national level regulations regarding food quality and equivalency must be based on "sound scientific evidence and appropriate risk analysis procedures" together with relevant inspection and testing methods that are applied evenly to domestic and imported food producers. 166 The SPS agreement made HACCP the only valid basis for national food safety regulations because
of its reliance on science-based risk assessments and auditing as an accountability
165 Data on SPS from Julie Caswell and Neal Hooker, "HACCP as an Intema'Cional Trade Standard," American Journal ofAgricultural Economics 78, no. 3 (1996); J.R. Lupine, A. Randell, and C.G. Field, "Harmonization of Trade and Quality Control Issues," in Fish Inspection, Quality Control and HACCP: a Global Focus, ed. Roy E. Martin, Collette Robert L., and Slavin Joseph W. (Arlington VA: Technomic, Proceedings of the International Conference on Fish Inspection and Quality Control, 1997).
166 Lupine, Randell, and Field, "Harmonization of Trade and Quality Control Issues," 18. 109 mechanism. Under the WTO, food safety was cast neutrally in the perceived certainty of chemistry, biology, and economic cost efficiency. 167
However, seafood had to be made auditable through "a trail of evidence and procedures that can be verified."168 Although Congress had not adopted any of the seafood safety bills by 1994, representatives from Alaska and other fisheries states had ensured that HACCP could be institutionalized without Congressional approval.169 First, budget appropriations in 1986 for the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) mandated the agency design and test a new mandatory seafood inspection program based on HACCP-the Model Seafood Surveillance Program (MSSP). The NMFS conducted a series of workshops between 1986 and 1990 and actively involved the seafood industry in developing the model HACCP plans for each individual seafood product. Each workshop focused on a specific species and brought together industry representatives who handled that fish to define and determine the proposed regulatory HA CCP model.
Another appropriations bill created the Office of Seafood in the FDA in 1991 with a dedicated cadre of seafood inspectors committed to establishing HACCP and in 1995, the
FDA set a 1997 deadline for mandatory HACCP compliance for domestic and imported seafood companies. The FDA seafood HACCP manual, known as the "Purple Book," is
167 Marsha Echols, Food Safety and the WTO: the Interplay of Culture, Science and Technology (London: Kluwer Law International 2001 ).
168 Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, 69.
169 My understanding of the processes discussed here comes from Billy, Former Director of the Office of Seafood, USFDA. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digital recording; Garrett and Hudak-Roos, "Developing an HACCP-Based Inspection System for the Seafood Industry."; John Kvenberg and others, "HACCP Development and Regulatory Assessment in the United States of America," Food Control I I (2000); U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Plans of Operation Manual: Model Seafood Surveillance Program, (Silver Spring, MD, 1987). 110 the model used not only in the United States but also in most developing countries.
Companies and states use this system of knowledge and values to coordinate relations
and activities within networks by standardizing language, procedures, and rules that have
become transnational, but also localized.
Companies and states make seafood networks auditable through the seven principles ofHACCP (See Table 5). Under HACCP, companies create their own
HACCP plans based on the risk assessment for the specific species, marine environment
and production site. 170 This means that each plan is adapted to the local conditions,
including workers, technology, and other attributes at each point in the network,
instituting flexibility. Once the hazards are identified, companies establish the methods
for controlling and monitoring them. As a result, no two HACCP plans are alike.
Table 5. The Seven HACCP Principles
Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Manual. Washington DC: Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 1996, Available from http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/-lrd/haccp.html (accessed 11November2005).
170 Garrett, Hudak-Roos, and Ward, "Implementation of the HACCP Program by the Fresh and Processed Seafood Industry." 111
Identifying and creating limits for hazards relies on the existing guidelines
developed during the 1970s and into the 1990s on tolerance levels, bacterial counts, and temperature controls described earlier. Controlling and monitoring hazards governs how
actors in the network handle raw materials, production processes, time and temperature
sequences, as well as personnel behavior and work methods. 171 These practices are
recorded as part of the record keeping system, which also tracks the names of the
fishermen, factory workers, and any other "information that might contribute to the history of the product."172 Taken together this creates the procedures and trail of
evidence to be verified, making HACCP an historical process in which the flow charts,
monitoring charts, lists of employees for each shift, and the signatures ofHACCP team
leaders represent not only a system of verification but control over the social and
environmental relationships in the network. Thus, although HACCP is mandatory,
companies continue to police themselves as they have since 1906, but now use HACCP
as an internal control system that produces self-surveillance and accountability not only
between companies, but among individual workers, suppliers, and fishermen.
HACCP gave states and companies the means to trade seafood across conflicting
national regulatory policies, multiple production environments and methods, different
cultural and political values attached to seafood, and a growing list of very tangible food
hazards. As such, HACCP represented a new global governance system by delineating a
set of flexible rules and procedures that produced a system of knowledge and a specific
171 Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification.
172 Bauman, "The Origin and Concept ofHACCP ", 4. 112 set of values that have become global but also localized. 173 But as I will show, the flexibility ofHACCP has made its implementation a highly uneven process between nation-states and even individual states in the United States. As HACCP made the relationships in global seafood networks visible and therefore controllable, companies and states used HACCP to make distinctions about who could-and could not-produce safe seafood. Furthermore, the auditing and traceability requirements created new forms of trust that added value to seafood through accountability and blame. The result is that seafood safety has been commercialized and marketized as a good for sale on the global market, producing a "geography of quality" in which safe seafood comes from specific compames,. environments, . and countries. . 174
Summary
Seafood's position as natural resource managed by states and the economic and biophysical risks associated with the industry facilitated a domestic quality convention for most of the US industry. Quality and safety were determined by individual state laws, trade associations, long-standing personal relationships or the history of the product or place. Much of the industry remained small-scale and regional in comparison to industrial agriculture, and companies were run by families who had been in the seafood
business for generations. The increasing global trade in seafood, restructuring and expansion of restaurants, and the privatization of much of the world's fisheries resources led to a new global governance system for seafood safety, facilitating trade and the
173 Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification, 69.
174 Mansfield, "Spatializing Globalization: A 'Geography of Quality' in the Seafood Industry." 113
availability of seafood. HACCP has made it easier for restaurants and seafood companies to standardize regional seafood cuisines and specific dishes by sourcing from developing
countries while also maintaining cultural notions of quality. However, in the United
States, the persistence of production practices and the family nature of these businesses
made seafood companies into heritage industries and sites of traditional folk culture and
authenticity. The next chapter examines how the domestic quality convention for
Chesapeake crabmeat created the cultural definitions of quality that came to define the
Maryland crab cake and a symbol of state heritage. CHAPTER3
CHESAPEAKE: THE TASTE OF TRADITION
Regions may be in danger not only from malls and cable television but also from attempts to freeze places in time or to define some particular component of a region as its essence.
Edward Ayers, All Over the Map
The J.M. Clayton crabmeat company sits on the edge of the Choptank River in the heart of Chesapeake country, Cambridge, Maryland. In business since 1890, Clayton claims the title of oldest crabmeat company in the world and is certainly the oldest packer still in operation on the Chesapeake. In 1930, Clayton's neighbors were seven other crabmeat and oyster packing houses, but seventy-six years later luxury condos rise from the shoreline surrounding Clayton's factory. The condos and other waterfront homes crowding the Chesapeake's shoreline are the summer refuges for suburbanites fleeing
Washington DC and other urban areas only a few hours' drive away. A marina juts out from the base of the condos and the sailboats and yachts encroach on the company's docks where watermen have tied up their deadrise workboats. 1 Since it is January, the condos and marina are quiet, and so too is J.M. Clayton-Maryland conservation laws
1 This is an indigenous boat style that averages about thirty to forty-six feet long. For more on Chesapeake workboats, see Paula Johnson, The Workboats ofSmith Island (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). For data on the industrialization of Cambridge, see Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Company, Sanborn Map: Cambridge, Dorchester County, Maryland 1930): available from University of Maryland, Digital Sanborn Map Collection (accessed 9 June 2005). 114 115 prohibit crabbing between December and April. I park my car near the only door visible from the parking lot and, as I open it, Bill Brooks greets me in the hall and ushers me intothe wood paneled office adorned with family photos, state health certificates, and notices to employees. Like all of the crabmeat packers on the Bay, Claytons is family owned and operated, in this case by three brothers-Bill, Jack, and Joe Brooks, the fourth generation of the Brooks family to manage Claytons (See Figure 2).
Figure 2. The Brooks Brothers of J.M. Clayton Company, left to right Bill, Joe, and Jack Brooks. Source: Photo by the author.
When I was here for the first time in 1999, twenty-three percent of Maryland's crab packing houses had closed within the last five years.2 The Brooks brothers were trying to figure out how their company would survive. They and other packers blamed the declining crabmeat industry on the flood of imported crabmeat coming from
Southeast Asia to make Maryland crab cakes. Unaware of the imported crabmeat,
Maryland tourism and cultural conservation agencies blamed the closures on the
2 Ablondi and others, The U.S. Blue Crab Industry (Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999). 116 substantial increase in "residential tourists"-suburbanites relocating to the Eastern Shore and buying waterfront property.3 Residential tourists had increased the population of the
Eastern Shore 122 percent since 1990.4 The state of Maryland feared the Chesapeake crabmeat industry would soon disappear, and with it a way of life-a folk culture they viewed as one of the last remaining examples of authentic culture in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Maryland state identity is deeply connected to what the state viewed as traditional production practices of the crabmeat industry-kin relationships, hand processing, seasonal, and small-scale-which made crabmeat factories pre-industrial, authentic places. For the state, the crabmeat industry was the product of an isolated folk culture due to the perceived isolation of the Eastern Shore and the seasonality of the Bay's resources. In the eyes of the state, the crabmeat industry was governed by dense social relationships and the Bay's ecology, making it a cultural relic in our modem, globalized society. As a cultural heritage object, the crabmeat industry needed to be saved, and the state of Maryland launched a cultural heritage tourism project with the goal of stemming the decline of local culture. However, this solution depended on maintaining ideological constructions of the industry and fishing communities as a folk culture. As we shall see, these constructions had begun during the 1960s in order to boost tourism by crafting a state identity based on water, recreation, and the image of independent watermen and
3 My knowledge of these issues comes from my participation in the Delmarva Folklife and Crab Pickers Oral History projects as described in the Appendix regarding methods.
4 Maryland Department of Planning, 1990 and 2000 Population Density per Square Mile for Maryland Chesapeake Jurisdictions 2001): available from http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/dw_popdensity.htm (accessed 30 April 2008). 117
family-owned seafood companies. On my first visit in 1999, I came to J.M. Clayton to
document the traditions of the industry and record oral histories for two separate heritage tourism and cultural conservation projects. What I began documenting, instead, was the
changing meaning of Maryland crab cakes.
As we sit in the Clayton office in 2006, Bill recalls that Maryland crab cakes had
always been a regional food, but "In the late 80s, things were popping and the industry was growing, [our customers] placed these huge orders for crabmeat and we had a lot of
resource available to us."5 Crabmeat packers attribute this growth to the rising popularity
of Maryland crab cakes due to the expansion of Phillips Seafood Restaurants in the
1980s. However, there is more here than just the expansion of a local restaurant, as
Phillips became the symbol of state heritage and an integral part of Maryland's
redefinition of economic growth with the redevelopment of Baltimore's Inner Harbor.6
Maryland crab cakes, then, symbolize not only regional identity, but also the means for
urban and rural redevelopment through tourism and coastal development making both
deeply connected to Maryland's image as a unique destination.
My fieldwork on the Eastern Shore between 1997 and 2001 revealed that the
industry's "traditional" production practices are the result of a domestic quality
convention developed over many decades. In this chapter, I trace how the Chesapeake
domestic quality convention was established and what attributes came to define quality
5 Jack Brooks, Bill Brooks, and Joe Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 11January2006, Cambridge, MD.
6 I use the term redevelopment as Neil Smith does to mean the construction of new buildings on used land, in contrast to gentrification which is the rehabilitation of older buildings by middle class homebuyers, landlords, and professional developers. See Neil Smith, "Gentrification and Uneven Development," Economic Geography 58, no. 2 (1982). 118
and safety for the industry. These production practices shaped the distinctiveness of
Maryland crab cakes, creating two kinds of crab cakes-the regional delicacy that came to be known in the industry as "restaurant quality crab cakes" and an industrial frozen
food known locally as "hockey pucks". At the end of the chapter I connect the industry's production methods to the efforts by the newly established tourism office during the
1960s and 1970s to establish a state identity based on a romanticized image of the
seafood industry and local watermen. The following chapter then examines how Phillips
Seafood Restaurants built their reputation on this state identity and quality convention,
and how their expansion and involvement in the redevelopment of urban waterfront areas challenged this convention. As a restaurant, Phillips served the crab cake recognized as more authentic that eventually came to represent state heritage, but also Phillips' own
corporate heritage.
Producing the Taste of Tradition
The Chesapeake's 11,684 miles of coastline make it the largest estuary on the east
coast, and a highly productive body of water due to its constant mixing of salt and fresh waters.7 However, the Bay's watershed covers 64,299 square miles and includes six
other states; some of the most heavily industrialized and populated areas in the United
States (See Figure 3). Effluents and contaminants from the watershed end up in the
7 Data on the Bay's geography, biology, and hydrology from Howard Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003); Tom Horton and William M. Eichbaum, Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay (Washington DC: Island Press, 1991); Alice Jane Lippson and Robert Lippson, Life in the Chesapeake Bay (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); John Wennersten, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2001). 119
Figure 3. Chesapeake Watershed and Shore Maps. Above, left: The Chesapeake watershed highlighted in grey stretches from New York to Virginia. Above, right: The Eastern Shore is the entire peninsula on the right of the Bay, including Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
Chesapeake. The Chesapeake is divided in half by the state borders of Maryland and
Virginia before emptying into the Atlantic Ocean, and the Bay itself divides the western shore from the Eastern Shore (See Figure 3). The western shore is a rolling landscape of suburban sprawl with metropolitan centers such as Washington DC and Baltimore while the Eastern Shore is a peninsula of flat land, farms, timber forests, and tidal marshes floating between the Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The Eastern Shore has long been viewed as an isolated place because of its location between Bay and ocean, and its tidal wetland landscape. 8 Since the tum of the 20th century, these geographic traits have crafted an image of a pre-modem, untamed hinterland populated by rugged individualists,
8 For a discussion of this, see Kelly Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers," Anthropology of Work Review 26, no. 1 (2005). See also Ann Vileisis, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History ofAmerica's Wetlands (Washington DC: Island Press, 1997). 120 especially watermen. The Eastern Shore's fishing communities seem disconnected from the modem world and intimately connected to the coastal environment within this image of Eastern Shore folk. Maryland's watermen and seafood industry were the ideal foundation for state identity based on notions of authentic, pre-industrial life.
The terms "folk" and "tradition" are ideologically constructed categories based on dichotomies of urban-rural, modem-backward, and culture-nature. In her study on the commodification of Appalachian culture, Becker demonstrates how the image of the folk was defined against modernity and American industrial capitalist society.9 Similarly,
Nadel-Klein's study on Scottish fishing villages highlights how the state capitalized on existing stereotypes of "fisherfolk" identity as "an occupational cultural identity defined against corporations, offices, and the global food system."10 Regardless of nationality, the folk are always a rural, internalized exotic other who live in tight knit societies that are close to nature, representing the imagined older values and unchanging social structure of pre-industrial capitalist society. As such, folk cultures live in the past and in opposition to urban residents who represent contractual social relations and progress.
These constructed meanings increase the value of the folk and their products as they become "landscape and lifestyle amenities" for tourists, second home owners and urban refugees. 11
9 Jane S. Becker, Selling Tradition: Appalachia and the Construction of an American Folk, 1930- 1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).
10 Jane Nadel-Klein, Fishing/or Heritage: Modernity and Loss along the Scottish Coast (Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2003).
11 C. Clare Hinrichs, "Conswning Images: Making and Marketing Vermont as Distinctive Rural Place," in Creating the Countryside, ed. Peter Vandergeest and E. Melanie DuPuis (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996), 265. 121
The image of the Chesapeake as an industrial place shaped by capitalism is not part of the heritage claimed and promoted by the state of Maryland. Instead, heritage tourism markets the perceived isolation of the Eastern Shore and fishing communities to create a regional identity and unique destination for tourists. Heritage tourism on the Bay has enshrined regional identity in the image of watermen and the material culture of
Eastern Shore fishing communities-model boats, fishing gear, and local food-that are valued as traditional and authentic because of their connection to the past. But these constructions obscure the specific histories of coastal life and industries, and their connections to wider spheres of economics and politics. In reality, the production practices of J.M. Clayton and other crabmeat factories have been shaped by the politics of fisheries management, state sanitation laws, and the social relations surrounding the sale, processing and marketing of crabs and how these articulate with the biophysical aspects of blue crabs. The result was the domestic quality convention and the "restaurant quality crab cake".
The Immense Protein Factory
From the 1800s until the late 1950s, the Chesapeake was the nation's second largest source of seafood, a reputation that earned the Bay the title of "immense protein factory." 12 Early colonial explorers viewed the Bay as an economic and trade engine
12 H. L. Mencken, Happy Days (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1940). The Bay was the second largest seafood producer in the United States by size of catch and value, but it has been the 5th largest since 1945, see Charles Quittmeyer, The Seafood Industry ofthe Chesapeake Bay States ofMaryland and Virginia: A Study in Private Management and Public Policy (Richmond VA: The Advisory Council on the Virginia Economy, 1957). 122 because of the abundance of seafood and the Chesapeake's potential for shipping. 13 The industrialization of the Bay's seafood resources began in earnest in the 19th Century when New England oystermen began raiding Chesapeake oyster beds, as well as taking seed oysters to restock their own waters. Banned from harvesting the Bay by the Virginia and Maryland legislatures, the New Englanders instead financed some of the largest harvesting, processing, and shipping operations in Baltimore, which exported the Bay's seafood to New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and across the country. From the 1930s to the 1950s, today's industrial chicken farming took shape on the Eastern Shore, developing the contract production used today in most NTC systems.14 Food production has always been one of the Bay's oldest industries, but after World War II, the
Chesapeake's seafood industries dropped to the fifth largest producers in the United
States-except for blue crabs. 15 The Chesapeake crabmeat industry started in 1880 on
Maryland's Eastern Shore at the height of Baltimore's growth. 16 By the 1920s the
13 Data on the start of the Bay's seafood industry from Steven Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation (Centerville MD: Tidewater Publishers, 1997).
14 For descriptions of how this industry developed, William Boyd and Michael Watts, "Agro Industrial Just-In-Time: the Chicken Industry and Postwar American Capitalism," in Globalizing Food: Agrarian Questions and Global Restructuring, ed. David Goodman and Michael Watts (London: Routledge, 1997); Roger Horowitz, Putting Meat on the American Table: Taste, Technology, Transformation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2006). For an analysis of the connections between the US chicken industry contract production and NTC, see Peter Little and Michael Watts, eds., Living Under Contract: Contract Farming and Agrarian Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994).
15 Quittmeyer, The Seafood Industry ofthe Chesapeake Bay States ofMaryland and Virginia: A Study in Private Management and Public Policy.
160n the start of the crabmeat industry, see David Cargo, The Maryland Crab Industry (Solomon's Island, MD: Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, State of MD, 1950); Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay; Lloyd Tyler, "The Blue Crab Industry of the Chesapeake Bay: Technological Developments from 1873-1983" (PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1983); William Warner, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay (New York: Back Bay Books, Little Brown and Company, 1994). 123
Chesapeake supported hundreds of crabmeat packing houses, most located on the Eastern
Shore, and until 1997 produced fifty percent of the blue crab harvest, and two-thirds of the crabmeat consumed in the United States.
Figure 4. The blue crab. Source: Photo by the author.
Blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus) are most prolific in the Chesapeake, where the
Bay's shallow waters and salinity levels provide the ideal habitat, allowing the ornery crustaceans to grow larger than in other waters (See Figure 4 ). 17 Blue crabs migrate up and down the Chesapeake based on its salinity levels, oblivious to Maryland and
Virginia's state borders. Jimmy crabs (males) prefer fresher water, and spend most of their life in the upper Bay while Sooks (females), preferring the salt of the ocean, congregate in the lower Bay. After mating during the summer, boys and girls bury themselves in the muddy bottom of the Chesapeake to hibernate during winter. They emerge in the spring and the females migrate to the Bay's mouth to release their eggs. In effect, Jimmies live in Maryland and Sooks live in Virginia, creating separate and conflicting state fisheries management systems with the result that blue crabs (and the
17 Data on the biology and habits of the blue crab from Lippson and Lipp son, Life in the Chesapeake Bay; Warner, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. 124
Chesapeake) have never been managed as a single resource or ecosystem. However, until the 1960s the powerful seafood lobby in both states insured that the Bay and its resources were managed toward increased productivity under the belief that scientific management, laissez-faire economics, and the Bay's natural abundance would prevent overharvesting. 18
As a wild caught species blue crab landings have always fluctuated year to year due to complex relationships between pollution, weather, predation by other species, the natural cycle of the crab stock, and overfishing. 19 Historically, large declines in crab harvests have been followed by often unexplained jumps in landings, leading many politicians, watermen, biologists, and natural resource managers to assume that the blue crab resource was inexhaustible, even into the 1980s. 20 The lack of data on the cause of fluctuating crab harvests did not prevent political conflicts between Maryland and
Virginia over blue crab management, especially when declines affected state economies.
One of the earliest conflicts over blue crab management dates to 1920 when Maryland
blamed the dramatic decline in blue crabs on Virginia's winter dredge season- harvesting "sponge crabs", or egg-bearing Sooks, during the winter while they
18 Wennersten, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography.
19 W. A. Van Engel and R. E. Harris, The Blue Crab Fisheries of Virginia and Maryland: A Preliminary Review ofLandings and Fishing Effort, 1929-1981 (Virginia Institute of Marine Science, 1983), 83-9.
20 Watermen always articulated this idea, and I found numerous scientific, scholarly, and policy articles, but the most significant example is the early Chesapeake Bay Agreements and Program directives which did not include a blue crab management plan. See Chesapeake Bay Program, Chesapeake Bay Agreement, 9 December, 1983). 125 hibemated.21 Although Maryland had banned the winter dredge season since 1916,
Virginia had not and the state's winter harvest had averaged up to eight-five percent
Sooks, primarily sponge crabs, since 1904. Virginia banned the winter dredge season in
1925 only to legalize the fishery again in 1930 when the crab population returned with a record catch level of 68. 7 million pounds, overwhelming packing houses which could not process and ship the crabs before they spoiled. Packers stopped buying crabs, but rather than improve the processing and distribution systems, Virginia opened its winter dredge season and Maryland lengthened its crabbing season in order to cut production by decreasing the population of crabs.22
This conflict was the earliest attempt at creating bi-state management plans for this migratory species, but the effort failed, and instead each state enacted new state-wide management plans.23 The conservation and management conflicts over female crabs continued for the next sixty years without a Bay-wide management plan, and Maryland kept its ban on harvesting sponge crabs until 1982.24 Instead, each state has enacted their own restrictions on gear, crab sizes, and seasons and these remained the main
21 Maryland's Governor Ritchie and Swepson Earle, the state Conservation Commissioner, argued that Virginia's harvesting of egg-bearing female crabs during the winter had caused the crab stock to collapse, though Maryland packing houses processed most of Virginia's winter catch. See Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay.
22 Ibid; Tyler, "The Blue Crab Industry of the Chesapeake Bay: Technological Developments from 1873-1983".
23 Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay.
24 All data on harvesting regulations from Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking ofBlue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 1999): available from http://mddnr.chesapeakebay.net/mdcomfish/crab/CRABREGREV3.htm (accessed 31January2006). 126
conservation efforts into the 1990s and a significant aspect of the domestic quality
convention (See Table 6).
Table 6. Sample of Maryland Crab Regulations, 1906-1958
Regulation
Source: Data from Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking ofBlue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998. 1999, Available from http://mddnr.chesapeakebay.net/mdcomfish/crab/CRABREGREV3.htm (accessed 31 January 2006).
Watermen catch blue crabs using a variety of gear, but the most prominent method since 1956 has been the crab pot.25 Invented in 1928 in Virginia, the "pot" is
actually a twenty-four inch by twenty-four inch box made from eighteen gauge chicken wire with several entry points for blue crabs. The wire box holds bait that attracts the
crabs, which are funneled inside the pot where they cannot escape. Watermen weight the pots to keep them on the bottom of the Bay, and tie a line and buoy to them then throw
25 For a full description of all crab harvesting methods see Larry Chowning, Harvesting the Chesapeake: Tools and Traditions (Centerville MD: Tidewater Publishing, 1990). 127 them overboard. They return in a day or two to pull in the pot and dump the crabs into a bushel basket. Crab pots have allowed watermen to catch more crabs with less effort, intensifying production as states increased the pot limit starting in the 1960s. Once harvested, watermen must sell their highly perishable catch to a crab packing house, which has served as bank and gas station.
Because of the lack of bank financing in the fishing industry, Chesapeake packing houses make loans to watermen before each season for repairs and new crab pots.
Watermen are therefore indebted to the packing house until the loan is paid, often through bushels of crabs. Watermen's pay fluctuates as the dockside price of crabs depends on the level of harvest, the time of the year, and geographic location. For example, crabs caught in April at the beginning of the season will always gamer a high price and so will those caught in Maryland. However, watermen joke that packers pay them by ''throwing the money up in the air and anything that sticks to the ceiling is the waterman's pay."26 Packing houses buy the full catch from a waterman, and then sort the crabs into large "number one Jimmies" (six inches wide or bigger) and the smaller
Jimmies and Sooks.27 The number one Jimmy crabs are used in the basket trade-whole steamed crabs sold by the bushel to bars and restaurants. The rest of the catch-all females and small males-is processed into crabmeat.
26 Roger Schwendeman, Waterman. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 25 May 1998, Tape number MAAFIKFNA/FT/3.4.305-306, transcript, Delmarva Folk.life Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Nandua, Virginia.
27 Blue crabs are measured from point to point of their lateral spine-the longest spike on their shell. 128
Taste: The Differentiation of Flavor
The key feature of the domestic quality convention is the taste of fresh crabmeat.
The scientific name of the blue crab--Callinectes sapidus-hints at why. The second word, sapidus, means tasty or savory in Latin. 28 Dr. Mary Rathbun, a Smithsonian carcinologist, identified over 998 crabs, but the blue crab was the only one she named for its culinary qualities. The sensory qualities of crabmeat most often discussed by Eastern
Shore residents are the sweet and slightly salty flavors that blend well with a light piquant seasoning, such as cayenne and vinegar.29 But the flavor of a blue crab directly corresponds to its diet, the salinity levels of the Chesapeake, the season and the particular life cycle stage of the crab. For example, crabs that have recently molted actually have little meat while crabs hibernating in the muddy bottom of the Bay have a gritty, sandy texture that makes the meat taste like dirt even when thoroughly washed. The flavor of the crabmeat also varies according to where the meat comes from in the carapace (body) of the crab, and this has most influenced the taste of Maryland crab cakes.
The Greek word Callinectes means "beautiful swimmer" and refers to the fifth leg of the crab, a paddle-like appendage. This swimming leg propels the blue crab through the water using swimming strokes rather than walking on the marine bottom, and makes blue crabs part of the large swimming crab family. All of this swimming produces a large muscle at the base of the leg and when blue crabs are steamed, this muscle forms the largest piece of meat, the lump meat. This physical attribute was the industry's first
28 Warner, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. In addition, the full name of the blue crab is Callinectes sapidus Rathbun, which is also the only one named for Dr. Rathbun.
29 Most people on the Western Shore use Old Bay, a commercial seasoning originally created in Baltimore. However, most local Eastern Shore residents make their own seasonings, which tend to have a regional character-upper Bay, lower Shore, east and west side of the Eastern Shore. 129 effort toward a differentiated product based on flavor, but also shaped other production practices as it became a distinguishing feature of Maryland crab cakes and shaped production practices.
Figure 5. Crab pickers at work. Above Left: crab picker removing the mustard, photo by the author courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Crab Pickers Oral History Project. Right: the picking room of J.M. Clayton in 2005. Source: Photos by the author.
After watermen land and sell their crabs in the afternoon, packing houses cull the crabs for size, then steam and cool the smaller crabs. These crabs will be picked the next morning by women sitting at long metal tables piled with cold, steamed crabs. Using a stainless steel crab knife, they remove the claws, which will be picked by someone else
(often a man). Then they remove the back of the crab (de-backing) and scrape the
"mustard" (heart and liver) and the "dead man's fingers" (lungs) out of the crab, and cut off its face all in one quick single motion. Then they cut off the legs and begin extracting the crabmeat from the carapace. With quick jabs and flicks of the wrist, they remove the crabmeat lodged between the segmented compartments of shell until the carapace is picked clean (See Figure 5). This process of picking crabs has not changed, but prior to
1910 crabmeat companies mixed all of the meat into one pound metal containers. 130
However, Frederick Jewett, an African American and an owner of Coulbourne and Jewett
Seafood Packing Company, began dividing the meat by "cut" in order to expand the company's crabmeat market. 30
Special
Figure 6. Above: The location of crabmeat grades are circled, each side of the crab provides lump, special, and backfin.
Mr. Jewett divided the meat by the interior sections of the crab: lump from the back of the crab near the swimming fin; special from meat in the middle sections of the
body; backfin as a mix of broken lump and special meat; and then claw (See Figure 6). 31
The cuts of meat, known as "grades" in the industry, allowed Mr. Jewett to capitalize on consumers' preference for mild tasting seafood and the company used this differentiation
30 A few crabmeat companies were owned by African Americans on the Bay, including Turner and Turner Seafood and Sanitary Seafood.
31 -Information on the invention of grades from Richard Dodds, "Black Pioneers of Seafood Packing," Weather Gauge 22, no. 1 (1994); Roy Harrison, Retired owner Harrison and Jarboe. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 3 March 1999, Tape number OH122, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Sherwood, MD. From the perspective of the FDA and others in the food industry, the different cuts of crabmeat are not grades, but styles. However, the industry has always used the term "grade". 131 of taste to market their products based on taste and size, and restructure their pricing.
The company marketed lump meat for its very mild taste and large size, positioning it as the premium and most expensive grade. The other grades were priced based on their increasing levels of fishy flavor and the decreasing size of the meat. These quality attributes ranked the grades in order from backfin, to special, and ended with claw meat, which possesses the strongest flavor and was therefore the cheapest. By 1935 the company shipped 3500 one-pound cans of graded crabmeat to Acme grocery stores in
Baltimore every Sunday and 1800 to the grocer's warehouse in Philadelphia, becoming the only company to pack one million pounds of crabmeat five years in a row. 32
Other packers adopted the grading system, creating a hierarchy of tastes and prices with lump meat at the top. By the 1960s, lump meat sold for an average price of
$1.40 a pound and claw for seventy cents a pound, and these prices continued to increase throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s. 33 Packers made all of their profit margins on lump meat while other grades were "sold at prices too low to pay the cost of production."34 However, Roy Harrison, owner of Harrison and Jarboe, recalled that crabmeat packers in the Chesapeake and elsewhere never standardized the lower grades between states or even between packing houses:
We had four different grades that we picked. Then they came out with "Deluxe" -deluxe didn't mean a thing but it made it sound good. Now the "Backfin" was
32 Dodds, "Black Pioneers of Seafood Packing."
33 Maryland Crabmeat Company, Corporate Records and Files, Maryland Crabmeat Company Collection (St. Michaels MD: Chesapeake Bay Maritime Musewn, 1950-1998).
34 See Charles Lee, George Knobl, and Emmett Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry Part 3: Strengthening the Industry's Economic Position," Commercial Fisheries Review 26, no. 1 (1964); Charles Lee and Bruce Sanford, "Crab Industry of Chesapeake Bay and the South: an Industry in Transition," Commercial Fisheries Review 26, no. 12 (1964). 132
supposed to be broken up lump, but what it really wound up to be was nothing but the ["Special"] from better pickers that picked cleaner and didn't mash it up. But they called it all kinds of things to get more money for it. 35
Packers also developed "topping" as a way to make each packed can attractive when
opened, especially after the industry switched to clear plastic lids in the 1950s. Roy
Harrison explained:
We insisted that [crab pickers] put topping on their packs. They [save] the biggest pieces ofbackfin as they were picking and they'd put that on the top when they filled a can, and then it would show up through [the lid] as great big lumps. And we did that with the claw and the regular, the special-we had to make it look pretty m. or d er to se 11 1t.. 36
A 1957 report by the Maryland Seafood Processing Lab noted that "standards of quality
for the entire history of the industry have been those of individual preferences in matters
of taste, odor, and appearances" making "each and every plant a unit to itself."37 The
differences in quality standards reflected not only the individual preferences of the packer
but the cultural variations related in how people in different regions consumed crabmeat
and defmed taste. Again, Roy Harrison remembered that "All our customers wanted white meat; they didn't want the yellow fat, but Baltimore market wanted the fat, and
Pittsburg market wanted only lump and backfm, but New York, you could send anything
up there, they didn't care."38 The result was that crab packers often created their own
35Harrison, Retired owner Harrison and Jarboe. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
36 Ibid.
37 Robert Littleford, Third Annual Report, 1956-57 ofthe Seafood Processing Laboratory, Crisfield Maryland (College Park: University of Maryland, 1957), 12-13. The report was based on a comprehensive survey of crabmeat factories from Maryland southward into the Gulf of Mexico.
38 Harrison, Retired owner Harrison and Jarboe. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 133 versions of the grades or developed proprietary (specialized) packs to fill requests from customers, and thus quality and taste varied plant to plant and state to state.
The report also noted that attempts to standardize quality criteria across the industry failed because of changing seasonal differences in taste and appearance of blue crabs that made it difficult to establish "an overall empirical set of criteria for quality. "39
In 1971, the FDA proposed national standards for grades and styles of crabmeat as part of industry-wide efforts to establish a national market (See Table 7). 40 The FDA standards attempted to codify the biophysical attributes of crabmeat into uniform product codes, but as Bill Brooks recalled the industry found them cumbersome:
The lumps had to be a certain weight or a certain size. You had to count shells to get a standard that the government would stamp "OK". We just couldn't meet their standards and everybody thought, "The heck with this." After listening to one of those [FDA] guys talk to you for fifteen minutes, you scratched your head and thought, "This just ain't going to work for crabmeat."41
Weighing each piece of lump meat required dedicated quality control staff, adding extra labor costs for packers while the standards did not allow for specialty packs. More importantly, these standards required staff to handle the crabmeat after picking, which violated Maryland sanitation laws by this time, making it impossible for Maryland to
39 Littleford, Third Annual Report, 1956-57 ofthe Seafood Processing Laboratory, Crisfield Maryland 13.
40 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Proposed United States Standard for Grades of Chilled Cooked Blue Crab Meat (Washington DC: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, 1971).
41 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 134
Table 7. Proposed FDA Crabmeat Standards, 1971
all meat from the meat from same as lump body adjacent to body portions mixture of but weight of all meat the swimming fin, normally lumps and at least 1/7 oz from claws at least 1115 oz per containing no flakes per portion portion lumps
3 or less minor 4 or more mmor defects major defects defects not completely Well packed and poorly filled, poorly arranged in can arranged arranged more than up to 10% of the 10% but less over 50% of product than 50% of the product the product up to 5% up to 10% over 10% variation variation variation slight variation stringy, excessively from tough, soft, mushy, characteristic mushy or tough or texture wet stringy less than 6 more than 6 less than 3 grams grams grams
2 or 3 per more than 3 pound, per pound not noticeable moderately excessively evident present
Source: Data from U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Proposed United States Standard for Grades of Chilled Cooked Blue Crab Meat. Gloucester Fishery Products Technology Laboratory, 1971, Available from http://www.cfast.vt.edu/downloads/bluecrabpubs/Proposed%20US%20Standard.pdf (accessed 12 June 2005). 135 comply with the proposed standards. As discussed in Chapter Two, the FDA did not have the authority to make the standards mandatory and packers stated that they never accepted them.
As late as 1983, reports on the crabmeat industry note that the major obstacles to national expansion were the lack of uniform products and the industry's inability to collectively solve this problem.42 Rather than standardize the industry, the grading system created a highly specialized market where trust was embedded in long-term purchasing relationships and customer preference for flavor, shape, and size that reflected local market expectations. As a result, the industry operated on a domestic quality convention and production remained flexible enough to create proprietary packs for customers. However, this also meant that crabmeat from different factories may not be interchangeable due to seasonal and packing variations.
Fresh Crabmeat
The taste of blue crabs, however, is also dependent on producing and consuming fresh crabmeat, which is highly perishable. The perishability of crabmeat has several impacts on the supply chain (See Figure 7). First, crabs must be processed, sold, and distributed within twenty-four hours to avoid the financial loss from spoilage, which reverts to the packer.43 Many crabmeat packers mitigated this risk by limiting
42 David Dressel and Donald Whitaker, The US. Blue Crab Industry: an Economic Profile for Policy and Regulatory Analysts (Washington DC: National Marine Fisheries Service for the National Fisheries Institute, 1983).
43 These problems are outlined in Ibid; Charles Lee, George Knobl, and Emmett Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry: Part 1 Survey of Processing Plants," Commercial Fisheries Review 25, no. 7 (1963). Dressel and Whitaker, The U S. Blue Crab Industry: an Economic Profile for Policy and Regulatory Analysts. Quittmeyer, The Seafood Industry ofthe Chesapeake Bay States ofMaryland and Virginia: A Study in Private Management and Public Policy. Crabmeat can spoil waiting for a buyer, 136 production to meet the demands of regular, long-term customers. Second, the preference for fresh crabmeat also means that inventory cannot be held. This increases costs throughout the supply chain and inhibits price stabilization because crabmeat must be sold and priced on a daily basis. The cumulative effect is that fresh crabmeat has a limited geographic range of distribution.
Figure 7. The structure of Chesapeake crabmeat networks, 1930s - 1975.
Prior to the 1950s, packing houses sold crabmeat to wholesale markets and
commission houses.44 These middlemen then sold to restaurants, hotels, supermarkets,
and manufacturers making frozen food, but the price was negotiated at each stage of the process. The wholesale markets were limited to metropolitan areas within one to two
especially when supply exceeds demand, or through improper or lengthy transportation and storage. Supermarkets often did not handle crabmeat properly either because refrigerated and iced displays were not available in the early years ofretail industry.
44 For distribution data, see James L. Anderson, The International Seafood Trade (New York: CRC Press, 2003); Lee, Knobl, and Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry Part 3: Strengthening the Industry's Economic Position."; Quittmeyer, The Seafood lndust1y of the Chesapeake Bay States of Maryland and Virginia: A Study in Private Management and Public Policy. 137
day's shipping time, including the east coast and westward to Louisville, Nashville,
Cincinnati and Chicago. Wholesalers, such as Fulton Fish Market in New York,
negotiated prices with packing houses and then sold the crabmeat at a higher margin.
The Baltimore crab market was the largest in the country and the main outlet for smaller packers, but crabmeat entering this market was sold by commission agents. Unlike wholesalers, commission agents do not take title to the seafood, but sell it for a
commission of the sale price. However, packers have no control over the sale price, which is negotiated by the commission agent and the buyer, and commission agents
frequently dumped crabmeat at low prices leaving packers with a loss. In the 1950s, packing houses decided to sell directly to restaurants and hotels in this same geographic
region, as packing house owner Edmund Nelson recalled:
Gradually we took over the restaurant trade, selling direct to restaurants. We knew the restaurants because of the basket trade [whole steamed crabs], but we ruffled some feathers. Some of our wholesalers wouldn't buy from us after that. But it was a move we had to make because the crabmeat business worked on a very small margin, and you couldn't afford to add an element in there like a wholesaler or a broker or something like that. The more direct you could go, the more share of the dollar you got. 45
This altered the networks and embedded distribution deeper in long-term relationships
and personal forms of trust between packing houses and restaurants based on quality and the reputation of the packing house. While this move garnered higher margins for the packers it did little to address the perishability or crabmeat and the possible expansion of
markets into new areas.
45 Edmund Nelson, Former Owner White and Nelson Company and Sales Manager Steel Tin Can Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, analogue recording, 29 July 2004, Timonium, Maryland. 138
A 1957 report on the crabmeat industry noted, "only when stable products of uniform quality are available will it be practical to extend the market area. "46
In short, the industry needed a product with a longer shelf-life and consistent quality across the industry in order to expand markets.47 The perishability problem was solved in
1951 when a Crisfield crab packer developed a pasteurization process, which heated fresh canned crabmeat in a water bath to at least 185 degrees internal temperature for three minutes, cooled it and then held it in cold storage at thirty-eight degrees.48 This extended the shelf-life from seven days to eighteen months and gave the industry a way to control the amount of crabmeat on the market, stabilizing prices and the fluctuating crab harvests while allowing for long distance shipping. In 1958, low harvest levels due to bad weather combined with high demand forced packers to sell their crabmeat fresh, but the glut of crabs in 1960 showed that pasteurization would stabilize supplies and prices.
Researchers at the Mary land Seafood Lab predicted that "in five or six years fresh
46 Lee, Knobl, and Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry Part 3: Strengthening the Industry's Economic Position," 1.
47 Efforts in the 1930s and 1940s to produce sterilized, shelf-stable canned crabmeat, like tuna or salmon, had limited success because the meat turned blue or black, a chemical reaction between the heat processing, the tin in the can, and the copper in the crabmeat. See Robert Littleford, Studies on Pasteurization of Crab Meat (Crisfield MD: University of Maryland Seafood Processing Lab, 1957).
48 On pasteurization history and efforts, see Dressel and Whitaker, The U. S. Blue Crab Industry: an Economic Pro.file for Policy and Regulat01y Analysts; Littleford, Studies on Pasteurization of Crab Meat; Littleford, Third Annual Report, 1956-57 ofthe Seqfood Processing Laboratory, Cris.field Maryland ; Robert Littleford, Fourth Annual Report, 1958, ofthe Seqfood Processing Laboratory (Crisfield, MD: University of Maryland, Department of Zoology, 1958); Tom Rippen and Cameron R. Hackney, "Pasteurization of Seafood: Potential for Shelf-Life Extension and Pathogen Control," Food Technology (1992); F. B. Thomas and S. D. Thomas, Technical Operations Manual for the Blue Crab Industry (Chapel Hill: Sea Grant Program, University of North Carolina, 1983 [1974]). 139
crabmeat will be as obsolete as raw milk."49 However, this assumed that consumers would readily accept the product.
Despite its advantages and the efforts of the Seafood Lab, pasteurization never gained acceptance with the industry or customers and consumers. 5° First, packers felt pasteurization removed some of the sweet flavor of crabmeat, making the already mild lump meat rather bland. Second, as I described in Chapter Two, the frozen fish stick and
breaded shrimp had opened the era of convenient frozen seafood by the 1960s and market
surveys reported the product lacked "the appeal necessary for a frozen food conscious public." 51 Third, during the early stages of development, many packers used the pasteurization process to pack fresh meat that was on the verge of spoiling, giving customers the impression that pasteurized crabmeat was old crabmeat.52 Finally, states and the industry made no effort to address the cost barriers of equipment and the lack of
cold storage facilities to hold the inventory. As a result, only larger packers had pasteurization facilities and until the 1980s, most packers used pasteurization to "put their
49 Frank Somerville, "Pasteurization of Crab Meat Saves Season-End Profits," Baltimore Sun, 6 November 1960.
50 Dressel and Whitaker, The U.S. Blue Crab Industry: an Economic Profile for Policy and Regulatory Analysts.
51 FMC Corporation, Final Report: Blue Crab Mechanization Program Analysis (Washington DC: Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, 1967), 3, R-2629.
52 For this and the costs, see Lee, Knobl, and Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry Part 3: Strengthening the Industry's Economic Position." The frozen food industry had the same problem in its early stages, see Gabriella Petrick, "The Arbiters of Taste: Producers, Consumers and the Industrialization of Taste in America, 1900-1960" (PhD Dissertation, University of Delaware, 2006). 140 money on ice" or can surplus crabmeat in the fall for sale during the winter when crab harvests were low and prices were higher. 53
However, pasteurization also kills pathogens. Pennsylvania was the largest outlet for Maryland processors, but in 1952 Pennsylvania health officials found e coli in one- third of the crabmeat sampled and threatened an embargo. 54 The cause of the contamination was crabmeat' s status as a ready to eat product-it is cooked first and then hand-picked and packed-which introduces opportunities for contamination.
Additionally, backfin and special grades come from sections of the carapace bisected by small, bony shell fragments that often end up in the picked crabmeat. As a quality control step, crab factories would pick through crabmeat to remove the shell fragments, introducing further opportunities for cross-contamination (See Figure 8). Pennsylvania and Maryland health officials, however, could not trace any of the adulterated crabmeat to a specific packer because the retailers had given the cans private labels and packers had shipped them without any identifying marks. 55 The University of Maryland Seafood
Laboratory began increased research on pasteurizing crabmeat to eliminate bacteria and the Maryland health department developed a traceability system that required packing houses to identify the factory and the crab picker through a numbering system.56
53 Tom Rippen, Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, telephone interview, 26 May 2005.
54 Anonymous, "Crabmeat Packers, Health Unit to Discuss Sanitary Measures," Baltimore Sun, 12December 1952; Anonymous, "Threat Prompts Crab Parley," Baltimore Sun, 27 December 1952.
55 Anonymous, "Plan Proposed to Identify Crabmeat," Baltimore Evening Sun, 1 January 1953.
56 See Littleford, Studies on Pasteurization of Crab Meat; Littleford, Fourth Annual Report, 1958, ofthe Seafood Processing Laboratory. 141
Figure 8. Removing shell fragments, circa 1951. The men on the left are picking through the pile of crabmeat on the right to remove the shell, Tilghman Packing Company. Source: courtesy of the Historical Society of Talbot County, H. Robins Hollyday Collection.
In 1955 Maryland issued new crabmeat processing regulations aimed at
controlling the risk of contamination at the picking stage. 57 The law required crab pickers to pick crabmeat directly into the can and then seal it, but as packers recalled this
left high shell counts in the meat, especially in cheaper grades. Although the Maryland
Seafood Lab developed industry wide pasteurization codes, each state health department
created its own regulations, further fragmenting efforts at industry-wide standards. 58 In
1957, Maryland passed its first laws regarding pasteurized crabmeat, which applied the
same production standard to the pasteurization process even though it eliminated pathogens introduced during the shell removal process. As a result of this values-based
risk assessment, repicking crabmeat to remove shell fragments became a sign of low
57 Title10 Department ofHealth and Mental Hygiene Code ofMaryland, Subtitle 15 Food Chapter 2 Crab Meat, (1955).
58 Littleford, Fourth Annual Report, 1958, of the Seafood Processing Laboratory. 142 quality, unsafe crabmeat while the presence of shell fragments meant the crabmeat was packed safely and was high quality. By the 1980s, fresh crabmeat remained the highest quality product in which the skills and reputation of the packer remained the measure of quality.
Hand-Picked
Another attribute of the domestic quality convention is that crabmeat is hand- picked, giving it an artisanal sense of authenticity. This authenticity, however, is highly gendered and racialized because crab factories have always relied on white and African
American women's labor to pick crabs and the Eastern Shore was highly segregated.59 In addition, this authenticity relied on kinship networks to recruit labor. Not only did both groups of women bring their children into the crab houses to work starting at an early age, but white women were the wives, daughters and other female relatives of the watermen selling crabs to the packing house. The domestic quality convention's reliance on lump meat insured that this labor system continued despite efforts to mechanize the picking process.
White and African American women worked the same job in packing houses- picking crabs. 60 If the packing house was small, they worked in the same room at separate tables, but larger packing houses had separate rooms joined by the weigh-in counter. Regardless of race, women were paid on the same piece rate system, receiving pay based on the number of pounds of crabmeat they picked. Women's labor remained
59 For analysis of women's labor, gender and race, see Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers."
60 Ibid. 143 cheap in the seafood industry because all seafood workers were exempt from the wage and hour laws enacted under the 1938 Fair Labor and Standards Act. 61 This changed in
1962 when Congress passed legislation requiring the industry to comply with the wage and hour laws by 1964. Packing houses demanded that crab pickers produce enough crabmeat in an hour to make the minimum wage of $1.15, but as owner Roy Harrison, of
Harrison and Jarboe, explained "A lot of them couldn't make it. If they couldn't make it up, then we had to make up the difference, and that got a little expensive. "62 Packers remembered that the rising labor costs threatened to close down the industry. According to the federal government, the answer was to mechanize the picking process and modernize the industry, but mechanization collided with lump meat's economic value.63
Crab packers make their profit on lump meat only when it is whole or unbroken, and to avoid losing profit lump meat must be kept intact, even if mechanically picked.
Chesapeake crab packers had experimented with and already created mechanized picking
61 For information on wage laws, see U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Education and Labor, Bills to Amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to Continue in Effect the Exemptions for Shellfish Processing as Contained in Such Act Prior to the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961: Hearing Before the Special Subcommittee on Labor H.R. 8927 and H.R. 8932, 16 February 1962.
62 To solve the problem in the short-term, the Department of Labor allowed packers to declare those crab pickers "handicapped" who could not pick enough crabmeat thus packers did not have to meet the minimum wage regulations. See Harrison, Retired owner Harrison and Jarboe. Interview by Kelly Feltault. And Bills to Amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to Continue in Effect the Exemptions for Shellfish Processing as Contained in Such Act Prior to the Fair Labor Standards Amendments of 1961: Hearing Before the Special Subcommittee on Labor H.R. 8927 and H.R. 8932. For an analysis of this issue and women's labor in the Chesapeake crabmeat industry, see Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers."
63 Information on mechanization from FMC Corporation, Final Report: Blue Crab Mechanization Program Analysis. 144 machines at their own expense.64 According to the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, these machines existed in an "advanced stage of development that could significantly reduce labor costs", but they could not overcome several inherent problems.65 Primarily, the machines used either centrifugal force or a water bath to extract the crabmeat, which shredded all of the lump meat and lost profit. The result was that "none of the machines observed can extract lump meat that equals the quality of that picked manually" so that even in 1983, a report on the industry stated "It is unlikely that mechanization will totally replace hand picking ... the unbroken lump meat can only be obtained by hand picking."66 Additionally, the seasonality of the industry meant the machines would sit idle for part of the year, making them a financial burden for smaller packers. Another problem was the increased risk of spoilage as rapid bacterial buildup in the mechanisms required frequent cleaning that slowed down production while breakdowns could amount to large losses of raw material. 67 As a result only the original inventors and two of the largest packing houses, J.M. Clayton and Meredith and Meredith, operated picking machines at their main factories. 68 However, these machines processed only the lower
64 Calvert Tolley, owner of Meredith and Meredith Company in Dorchester County, designed and manufactured two different picking machines-the Tolley Picker and the Tolley Debacker-while Ted Reinke worked with J.M. Clayton on a different picking machine, the Quik Pik.
65 FMC Corporation, Final Report: Blue Crab Mechanization Program Analysis. 2.
66 Dressel and Whitaker, The US. Blue Crab Industry: an Economic Profile for Policy and Regulatory Analysts; FMC Corporation, Final Report: Blue Crab Mechanization Program Analysis, 2.
67 FMC Corporation, Final Report: Blue Crab Mechanization Program Analysis.
68 Calvert Tolley owned crab picking facilities in Louisiana, Texas, and Florida. J.M. Clayton subcontracted production to smaller Chesapeake packers and would process their crabs in the picking machine. Meredith and Meredith closed in 2001. J.M. Clayton remains the only Chesapeake packer with a crab-picking machine. See Calvert Tolley, Retired Owner Meredith and Meredith. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 23 February 1999, Tape number OH121, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Toddville, Maryland.; J. Clayton Brooks, Retired Owner, J.M. 145 grades of crabmeat when there was a surplus of crabs. Machine picked crabmeat was considered lower quality and was primarily sold to companies like Mrs. Paul's to make frozen deviled crab cakes. 69 This meant that the crabmeat industry remained a labor- intensive operation in order to provide lump meat, the highest quality and most expensive crabmeat.
Restaurant Quality Crab Cakes
The crabmeat industry had defined the domestic quality convention by the 1970s, emerging from the specialized knowledge, routinized production practices, cultural expectations, formal and informal regulatory standards, and personal trust relationships established over several decades. This domestic quality convention shaped the commercial use of crabmeat along with Maryland sanitation laws that prohibited deboning crabmeat. This left higher shell counts in the cheaper, smaller grades of crabmeat than the more expensive lump or backfin. Restaurants began complaining about the shell fragments in the meat, and the extra labor that it cost them to remove the shell:
The biggest complaint about crabmeat is bone! This reason causes restaurants to buy lump meat at twice the price of regular because this eliminates the extra labor cost of picking out bones from regular crabmeat. 70
Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 22 March 1999, Tape number OH123.1 and OH123.2, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Cambridge, Maryland.; and Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
69 Lee, Knobl, and Deady, "Mechanizing the Blue Crab Industry: Part 1 Survey of Processing Plants."
7°Calvert Tolley, "Paper by Calvert Tolley on Mechanizing Crab Picking," 1967, available from Virginia Tech SeaGrant Program online collection, http://www.cfast.vt.edu/downloads/bluecrabpubs/Calvert%20Tolley%20Paper.pdf, (accessed 11 April 2007). 146
As a result, restaurants increased their purchases of lump meat, mixing it with backfin or
special to make restaurant quality crab cakes, and using the other grades to make
stuffings and other dishes. The resulting Maryland crab cake was differentiated by the larger chunks of crabmeat, little filler such as bread crumbs, and the higher price. The increased use of the most expensive and least available grade of crab meat meant that restaurants had to depend even more on their relationships with packing houses in order to plan menus around the availability of different crabmeat grades.
Figure 9. Above left: Mrs. Paul's frozen deviled crab cake known as a "Hockey Puck" crab cake. Source: Photo by the author. Right: Maryland crab cake known as restaurant quality crab cakes after the 1960s. Source: Courtesy of Chef Greg Johnson.
The bulk of the cheaper grades were used to make frozen crab cakes, which, on the Chesapeake, were known as "hockey pucks" because they contained breading and
flake meat (See Figures 9). 71 For example, Chesapeake seafood processor, Tilghman
Packing Company, produced "Miss Lib's Crab Cakes" from the 1940s until the company
71 The crabmeat for these products came primarily from Chesapeake packing houses, many of whom did not invest in freezing technology because it produced mushy, off-tasting crabmeat when defrosted. Quittmeyer, The Seafood Industry of the Chesapeake Bay States ofMaryland and Virginia: A Study in Private Management and Public Policy. Maryland packers also made other value-added products such as bobbed crabs and crab bisque. 147
Figure 10. Women at Tilghman Packing Company prepare and package Miss Lib's Crab Cakes. Source: courtesy of the Historical Society of Talbot County, H. Robins Hollyday Collection. was sold in 1964 and in 1951, Mrs. Paul's introduced frozen deviled crab cakes (See
Figure 10). 72 Both of these frozen versions were machine-formed balls made mostly from breading with small amounts of the cheaper grades of crabmeat. Mrs. Paul's opened a factory in Crisfield to source pasteurized crabmeat directly, but in the early
1970s began using cod fish flakes instead of crabmeat due to cost. 73 These characteristics made the convenience market, whether for retail or restaurants, the domain of lower quality, cheaper crab cakes that had a greater distribution range. Unfortunately,
72The hand-formed, frozen crab cakes were named after employee Elizabeth Dunleavy who provided her family recipe. For a history of the company in relation to redevelopment issues on Tilghman Island, see Margaret Enloe, "From Watermen to Waterviews; from Tilghman Packing to Tilghman on Chesapeake: A Cultural Landscape Study of Avalon Island, Chesapeake Bay" (MA Thesis, University of Maryland, 2000). See Elizabeth Dunleavy, Crab Picker, Tilghman Packing Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 1998, Tape number OHl 13, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Tilghman Island, MD.
73 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Section 540.285 Crabmeat Products 1973: Labeling, Crabmeat Products with Added Fish or Other Seafood Ingredients, Revised 1980 (Washington DC: Food and Drug Administration, 1980).; Lloyd Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD.; Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 148 consumers outside the market area for fresh crabmeat experienced crab cakes through these lower quality products and were not impressed-frozen crab cakes never became major sellers because they did not meet the primary quality attribute of taste.
The Chesapeake domestic quality convention produced fresh crabmeat that was hand-picked and packed, and Maryland's crabmeat contained shell fragments as a sign of purity and freshness. Packers sold directly to restaurants and used wholesalers to distribute crabmeat to retailers and other customers, but the perishability of the crabmeat limited distribution to the Mid-Atlantic and other metropolitan areas within one or two day's delivery time. Restaurants had become the primary customer for Chesapeake crabmeat packers and this meant daily phone calls between the two in order to gauge the availability of crabmeat based on the fluctuating harvest. However, sales to restaurants were based on the packing house name and the state in which the crabmeat was produced because of the variations in the grading system, the flexible and proprietary production, and the differences in state sanitation laws. However, beginning in the late 1960s, packing houses would find it difficult to control the distribution of the crab resource at the local and state levels.
From Industry to Industrial Heritage
The Chesapeake quality convention was fully defined by 1970, but the image of the Chesapeake as an immense protein factory had begun to change. Starting in the
1950s, the economic purpose of the Bay began to shift toward tourism and recreation while land use patterns turned toward suburbanization and commercial development as 149 the Chesapeake was re-imagined from a place of work to "the land of pleasant living."74
The crabmeat industry experienced these changes in three ways. First, the demand for steamed crabs increased as crab feasts became a summer ritual for vacationers and regional residents, but packing houses lost control of the distribution of the catch.
Second, reapportionment and new structures to fisheries management shifted power away from the seafood industry toward suburban areas and those aligned with the recreation industries. Finally, the Chesapeake's watermen became the primary image for state identity through a new tourism office.
Crab Feasts in the Land of Pleasant Living
Packing houses had controlled how the harvest was distributed by buying the entire catch from watermen and then culling crabs for either crabmeat or the basket trade-whole steamed crabs. The basket trade started in 1927 and whole steamed crabs were eaten as a bar snack or bought by clubs for picnics in the Chesapeake region. 75
This consumption pattern changed in the mid 1950s as suburban areas expanded around
DC and Baltimore, and families bought bushels of steamed crabs for their back yard barbeques. 76 Alternatively, families could also have a crab feast at a new form of
74 This change is first noted by Eugene Cronin, see Eugene Cronin, Report ofthe Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Management Workshop (Waldorf MD: The Chesapeake Bay Commission, 1987). The Eastern Shore had been called the Land of Pleasant Living since the 1920s, see Boyd Gibbons, Wye Island: Insiders, Outsiders and Change in a Chesapeake Community, 2nd edition ed. (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 2007).
75 The Stewart brothers of Wenona Maryland began selling whole steamed crabs to bars and wholesalers in Baltimore. During Prohibition, lagging beer sales slowed the production and consumption of steamed crabs, but they quickly picked up again after Prohibition. See Tyler, "The Blue Crab Industry of the Chesapeake Bay: Technological Developments from 1873-1983".
76 Data on changing consumption patterns from Nelson, Former Owner White and Nelson Company and Sales Manager Steel Tin Can Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, analogue recording; 150 restaurant that had opened on the Bay-the crab house, which served steamed crabs by the dozen. By the 1960s, whole steamed crabs were no longer just a bar snack and had become a significant source of income for packing houses, as the number one Jimmies commanded a high price with little labor.
But control of the resource was based on the kinship networks between white watermen who harvested the crabs and their female relatives who picked the crabs. 77
Watermen sold their harvest to the packing house where their wives worked and women who married watermen worked at the packing house that bought their husband's crabs.
In the late 1960s, crab pickers began to leave the crab house seeking other employment. 78
Women were drawn out of the crab industry by several years of bad harvests starting in
1968 and the appearance of Northern manufacturers in newly established industrial zones offering health and retirement benefits. 79 As women left the crab house, the kinship networks that kept watermen tied to specific packing houses dissolved.
Many watermen began selling their catch to processing factories offering the highest price, but they also began culling the Number One Jimmy crabs from their catch themselves, and selling directly to wholesalers and restaurants. Roy Harrison recounted
Shirley Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded, 19 May 2005, Ocean City, MD.
77 Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers."
78 Packing house owners, agreed, but see Evelyn Robinson, Crab Picker, Meredith and Meredith. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 31March1999, Tape number OH127, 1-2, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Wingate, MD.
79 Like other Southern states, Maryland's Eastern Shore created industrial zones with special tax qualifications that attracted companies to the Shore's unorganized, cheap labor. African American crab pickers had begun to leave the industry during the Great Migrations but their husband's were not crabbers. Many of the white crab pickers that left the industry worked for AirPax assembling airline components. 151 that the crab house restaurants and wholesalers wanted to by-pass the middleman-the packing house--and made direct sales easier for watermen:
We stopped [culling crabs] in the seventies because most of the crabbers would cull them out themselves, and then the [buyer's] trucks would come around and buy those. The cities, they pay so much more money for the basket crabs that we couldn't afford to buy the good crabs. And then the [buyers] got refrigeration on the trucks and these places could steam their own crabs and season them. Thelc didn't need us to do that anymore. All we got were the culled crabs after that. 0
Packers lost control over how the unpredictable harvest was divided and were forced to handle only the smaller, mostly female crabs. For those crab pickers, like Laurena
Collemer, who had picked crabs since the 1930s and remained in the packing houses this
loss of control over the distribution of the catch meant picking "trash crabs:"
We didn't have trashy things like we have now to pick. See all the big crabs and everything are shipped to the city. We just pick the leftovers now, like the females and things like that. 81
By the 1980s approximately thirty percent of the total annual harvest entered the basket trade, but during the peak season of summer almost all of the Jimmies went directly to
restaurants to feed the tourists and locals at all-you-can-eat crab feasts. 82 This reduced the size of the lump meat picked at the packing houses during the summer along with
packer's margins, and gave them even less control over costs and prices as the basket
trade began to raise dockside prices.
80 Harrison, Retired owner Harrison and Jarboe. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
81 Laurena Collemer, Crab Picker, J.M. Clayton. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 13 April 1999, Tape Number OH125.l-2, transcript, Crab Picker's Oral History Project, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Cambridge, Maryland.
82 Warner, Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay. 152
Saving the Bay for Tourists
Starting in the 1960s, packing house owners also saw their power over Bay management decline due to restructuring of fisheries management and reapportionment
laws that shifted power to Baltimore and DC suburbs. As described earlier, Chesapeake
conservation efforts had been limited because of each state legislature's control over
appropriations and the powerful and vocal seafood industry's influence over the
legislature. 83 The power of the seafood industry had been greatest in Maryland because
each county had one representative and those counties dependent on the Chesapeake
outnumbered those further inland and often swayed the legislature. However, in 1964 the
US Supreme Court ruled that state legislatures must be apportioned on the basis of population.84 J.C. Tolley, who owned Meredith and Meredith, remembered that this
favored the growing suburbs of DC and Baltimore over the rural counties along the Bay:
When I was young, the Eastern Shore delegates had a lot of power in Annapolis, until reapportionment. After reapportionment, you went from a Senator for each county to one for three counties, and you went to a shared Delegate for two counties. It changed the whole equation and the power went to, well, Prince George's and Montgomery County and the population centers. We lost so much clout in Annapolis from the Chesapeake Bay region; it was a big change, a sea change.85
83 The seafood industry included the much larger and even more powerful oyster industry. For more on this, see Wennersten, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography. And Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation.
84 Anonymous, "Districting Bill is Passed by Maryland Legislature," New York Times, 1 April 1965; John Pomfret, "States Accepting Court's Decision on Apportioning: Rural Power Declines," The New York Times, 28 December 1964.
85 J.C. Tolley, Retired Owner, Meredith and Meredith. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 30 January 2006, Wingate, MD. Rural counties were not the only areas to lose representation as the city of Baltimore lost three delegates due to white residents moving to the suburbs starting after World Warll. 153
This "sea change" signaled a change in power relationships and patterns of use for the
Bay's resources that eventually affected how the Chesapeake was defined and managed.
The creation of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in 1967 signaled the emergence of a local environmental movement and repositioned the Bay as an endangered ecosystem. 86 This regional Chesapeake movement was supported by a national environmental movement that led to the creation of the EPA, and the subsequent Clean
Air and Water Acts. The federal government reorganized the Bureau of Commercial
Fisheries, placing it back in the Commerce Department and renaming it the National
Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS). This new agency was given more authority over the nation's fisheries resources through regional commissions that developed management plans. In Maryland, this meant reorganizing how the Bay's fisheries were managed.
To be fair, Maryland had slowly delegated the daily management of the state's natural resources away from the legislative body to a group of commissions since the
1920s, which attempted to streamline resource management, but remained highly fragmented. 87 But in 1969 Governor Mandell consolidated this process and established the Department of Natural Resources headed by a politically appointed cabinet level secretary who reported directly to the governor. The Secretary of Natural Resources gained control of all of the state's resource management commissions while regulatory authority was relocated from the legislature to the Secretary who consulted with the
86 For more on this see Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation; Wennersten, The Chesapeake: An Environmental Biography.
87 Data on the reorganization from Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay. 154 scientific community.88 Scientific management would dictate Maryland's conservation policy; this did not eliminate politics but rather created different channels of influence.
Conversely, Virginia kept the structure of natural resource commissions with regulatory authority residing in the General Assembly. The Virginia Marine Resource Commission remained the management agency for the lower Bay's fisheries with limited authority until 1985 when the Fishery Management Act transferred regulatory powers from the legislature to the Commission. However, representation on the Commission has always been closely connected to the seafood industries, but beginning in the 1970s representation from recreational fisheries and real estate developers increased. Marine scientists worked for the Commission, but were not represented on the Board.
The Chesapeake also became a federal management experiment starting in the
1960s and by the 1980s was the most intensely studied estuary in the world. 89 Yet,
Chesapeake fisheries management remained bifurcated and became more complicated in
1976 when the EPA became the lead agency for "saving" the Chesapeake and established the Chesapeake Bay Commission. The Commission became the management arm for restoration of the Bay in 1980, but held no regulatory authority and instead acted in an advisory capacity to states and Congress with representation from Virginia, Maryland, and later Pennsylvania. In 1983 the EPA issued another Bay-wide study that declared the
Chesapeake an environmental disaster and outlined a comprehensive monitoring plan to track the health of the Chesapeake. As a result, the three state governors, the head of the
88 Regulations are presented to the public and the legislature for comment, but even if the legislature does not support the regulations the Governor can enact them.
89 Data on federal and state management from Davison and others, Chesapeake Waters: Four Centuries of Controversy, Concern and Legislation; Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay. 155
EPA, and the mayor of DC signed the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement in 1983 pledging to implement coordinated efforts to manage the Bay as one ecosystem and protect the living resources of the Chesapeake. 90 The Chesapeake Bay Program, funded by the EPA, was created to implement the agreement which primarily focused on improving water
quality.91 Fisheries management efforts focused on oysters and several important finfish,
such as shad and rockfish, which had become important recreational species, but blue
crabs were not part of these early bi-state efforts. However, by the 1980s blue crabs had
become the most valuable resource in the Chesapeake as many other fisheries faced
collapse. 92
The increasing levels of management signaled a new governance system for the
Chesapeake. This intensified the politics of resource management as new stakeholders-
real estate developers, construction companies, and other industries aligned with
recreation and tourism-began to lobby politicians through campaign contributions. 93
Starting in the 1980s, these industries gained easy access to the Bay's coastlines and
other resources with the result that building waterfront homes, shopping malls, and tourist
destinations on the Chesapeake became much easier.94 This was especially so after the
9°Chesapeake Bay Program, Chesapeake Bay Agreement.
91 Chesapeake Bay Program, The State ofthe Chesapeake Bay Second Annual Monitoring Report, 1984-1985 (Gloucester Point, VA: Chesapeake Research Consortium, Inc., 1987), 125.
92 Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay.
93 Ibid.
94 This would not become apparent until the 1990s, see Karl Blankenship, "Bay Wetland Losses Unabated in 1980s," Bay Journal, 1994, available from http://www.bayjournal.com/article.cfm?article=164, (accessed 12 April 2007). 156 success of Baltimore's Inner Harbor redevelopment project, the subject of the next chapter.
Producing a State Identity
The public image of the Chesapeake's watermen was of stoic, hardworking, backward looking loners who lived close to nature in isolated places like tidal marshes, islands, and along the water's edge. But between 1960 and 1980, Maryland's watermen and seafood industry crossed into folkloric romanticism with the assistance of the state's new tourism office.95 The culture of watermen and their image was used to promote recreation on the bay by selling the production economy of the Chesapeake's seafood industries as an amenity for tourist experience. Over this twenty year span, the state crafted a sense of regional identity based on the pleasures of living on the waterfront, tasty regional seafood cuisine, pretty vistas, and boating adventures.96
With a very limited budget, the new tourism office relied on high profile magazines, such as National Geographic, and local and national writers for free advertising to establish a state identity that merged history with the natural world through the Chesapeake and watermen.97 The magazine articles helped to define the identity of
Maryland as paradoxically one of independent, pre-industrial fishermen for the purpose of a leisure economy. In the 1964 article "Chesapeake Country," suburbanites could sail
95 Eric A. Cheezum, "Discovering Chessie: Waterfront, Regional Identity, and the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, 1960-2000" (PhD Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 2007).
96 George Calicott, Maryland and America: 1940 to 1980 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985).
97 Cheezum, "Discovering Chessie: Waterfront, Regional Identity, and the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, 1960-2000". 157
and experience the lifestyle of watermen who lived close to nature.98 By 1989, local
writer and Eastern Shore native Tom Horton captured the authenticity of the Bay that
seasonal and residential tourists expected:
And how we love the images of the men and the boats and the independent lifestyle, still attuned to natural forces that having watermen around perpetuates. It is a luxury that few developed regions on earth enjoy-not just oysters on the half shell, but oysters on the half shell caught by salty captains under full sail in century old wooden skipjacks. Not just rockfish stuffed with crab meat but rockfish and crabmeat that come from little towns and islands where Elizabethan English still tinges the speech and the quaint harbors are the stuff of picture post cards.99
Salty captains and stoic watermen, exotic dialects and fifty year old family owned
seafood businesses lent authenticity to Maryland cuisine and state identity.
The connection between Maryland and seafood gastronomy had been introduced
in 1939 through Crosby Gaige's New York World's Fair Cookbook, which featured
Baltimore crab cakes.Ioo But the 1964 New York world's fair established the Bay's
heritage as an exportable brand through Maryland seafood cuisine. IOI Maryland's two
recreations of seaside restaurants-one a fishing village the other a fancier version-were the most successful exhibits at the fair, and cemented the idea of the Bay as a place of
recreation linked to eating seafood. Afterwards, Governor Tawes, and successive
98 Nathaniel T. Kenney, "Chesapeake Country," National Geographic September (1964). National Geographic published two article on the Chesapeake in the time period because as Cheezum points out Mary land's Director of Tourism was friends with the staff at the magazine.
99 Tom Horton, Bay Country: Reflections on the Chesapeake (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), 188.
100 John F. Mariani, Encyclopedia ofAmerican Food and Drink (New York: Lebhar Friedman, 1999), 103.
101 Details on the 1964 World's Fair from Cheezum, "Discovering Chessie: Waterfront, Regional Identity, and the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, 1960-2000". 158 governors, supported the transition of the Bay to an economy based on the yachtsman's view of the Chesapeake and the independent lifestyle of fishing communities.
This image separated the seafood industry from the capitalist modern world with the result that the Bay became a place to contemplate the relationship between man and nature while having fun sailing and relaxing. Everyone could be a waterman by proxy, but as Cheezum notes watermen became the "price of admission."102 Between 1970 and
1978, several events conspired to solidify this folk identity as state identity. First, a state commission released a report in 1970 that identified Maryland's folklife through material culture, stories, and song, and featured the watermen of the Eastern Shore, making the case for using culture as a resource to increase tourism.103 Based on the report, the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival featured Maryland and its watermen in 1972, generating interest among state legislators and in 1974 the National Endowment for the Arts funded a state folklorist for Maryland who began documenting and exhibiting Maryland maritime folk culture.104 In 1978, the popularity ofMichener's novel Chesapeake and another appearance at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival solidified the watermen as
Maryland's state identity.105
102 Ibid.
103 Charlie Camp, "Developing a State Folklife Program," in Handbook ofAmerican Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Indiana University Press, 1986).
104 Ibid.
105 Cheezwn, "Discovering Chessie: Waterfront, Regional Identity, and the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, 1960-2000"; James Michener, Chesapeake (New York: Random House, 1978). 159
Summary
Definitions of quality for the Chesapeake crabmeat industry center on the taste of fresh crabmeat. These attributes, however, were shaped by conflicting state crab management plans, a grading system that differentiated crabmeat by cultural and financial value but was not standardized across the industry, competing state sanitation laws, and gendered labor relations. By the 1970s, the practices, norms, and personal relationships of the crabmeat industry had established a restaurant quality crab cake featuring backfin or jumbo lump crabmeat, the most expensive grades that required hand picking. At the same time, packing houses lost control of the distribution of the catch and increasingly lost the power to influence fisheries management and the use of the coastlines. Throughout the 1970s, the recreation and tourism industries grew as the
Chesapeake shifted from a site of food production to one of leisure and recreation through cultural productions. In this context, the crabmeat industry's value changed from food production to cultural production as crabs and the people who caught and processed them became a symbol of state identity that espoused independence and recreation. CHAPTER4
DESTINATIONS: PHILLIPS AND BALTIMORE
Standardization is part and parcel of the economy of scale that high volume tourism requires.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, Destination Culture
In the last chapter, I examined the development of the domestic quality convention in the Chesapeake crabmeat industry and how this shaped the quality attributes of the Maryland crab cake, but also produced the industry as traditional. This chapter explores how Phillips Seafood restaurants and their Maryland crab cakes became tourist destinations symbolizing cultural heritage and the state's success at economic growth. In 1980 Baltimore transformed from the "Armpit of the East Coast" into a tourist playground and model of urban renewal and waterfront redevelopment. Phillips' connection to Chesapeake fishing communities and regional foods made the restaurants a site for producing and consuming regional folk identity and cultural heritage-
Chesapeake watermen and pre-industrial seafood plants.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the urban shoreline of America's cities underwent a physical transformation from industrial harbors and places of work to sites of consumption as leisure and tourism space.1 However, Holcomb argues that the purpose of urban waterfront redevelopment projects is to reshape not only the built
1 Yehuda Hayuth, "The Port-Urban Interface: an Area in Transition," Area 14 (1982). 160 161
environment but also the image of the city and the state.2 Bell and Valentine suggest that restaurants have played a key role in the renaissance of cities as sites of cultural capital.3
This is particularly so for local restaurants serving regional foods, which, as part of the tourism industry, market place through the emotional connection with and desire for an
authentic experience. In these restaurants, images of the folk and traditional culture
along with regional food offer tourists a way to consume a lifestyle of the rural past and to step out of the modem world, if only for the duration of the meal. This makes restaurants simultaneously sites of regional identity construction and commodification, key actors in reasserting the local that redefmes urban and rural landscapes and remakes the reputation of entire cities.4 However, when places and their local cuisines are
commodified as tourist destinations our American foodview of consistency, abundance,
and accessibility becomes a driving force in the success of redevelopment strategies,
demanding an industrial quality convention and greater control over resource distribution.
Destinations: Seaside and City
Recreational travelers have ventured on to the Eastern Shore since the 1880s, but the completion of the Bay Bridge in 1952 changed the pattern of tourism. 5 Before the
2 Briavel Holcomb, "Revisioning Place: De- and Re-Constructing the Image of the Industrial City," in Selling Places: The City as Cultural Capital, Past and Present, ed. C. Philo and G. Kearns (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1993).
3 David Bell and Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (New York: Routledge, 1997).
4 David Beriss and David Sutton, "Restaurants, Ideal Postmodern Institutions," in The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat, ed. David Beriss and David Sutton (New York: Berg Publishing, 2007).
5 Early tourism data from Erve Chambers, Heritage Matters: Heritage, Culture, History, and Chesapeake Bay, Chesapeake Perspectives (College Park: University of Maryland Sea Grant College, 162
1950s, the Shore was the private vacation spot for wealthy families from neighboring industrial cities, especially Baltimore, Philadelphia, the District, Pittsburgh and New
York-the same market as for crabmeat. Ocean City was a favorite escape for the urban elite of the Mid-Atlantic, who arrived by train to the seaside town on the Atlantic Ocean.
They shared the beach with commercial fishermen, whose wives owned and operated the cottages and boarding houses that stretched the few blocks to 9th Street. The first span of the Bay Bridge and a paved highway made a clear path for middle and working class tourists from the same metropolitan areas to get to the Eastern Shore and Ocean City.
Outside Ocean City, the rest of the Bay slowly developed tourism infrastructure through state and county efforts starting in the 1960s, especially through taxes on the increasing number of recreational boats. 6 By the 1970s, Americans increasingly equated consumption with the recreational use of natural resources, and mass tourism on the
Chesapeake expanded through fishing clubs. 7 In Ocean City, private investment created a real estate boom that transformed the skyline adding high rise corporate hotels and lengthened the boardwalk as the city by the sea expanded northward up to 21st street. 8 If you drive up the strip in Ocean City today, you can see the resort's history in its architecture. The grand homes of the early hotels and boarding houses clustered at the
2006); Boyd Gibbons, Wye Island: Insiders, Outsiders and Change in a Chesapeake Community, 2nd edition ed. (Washington DC: Resources for the Future, 2007).
6These changes are most obvious in annual reports from the Maryland Board of Natural Resources between 1961and1971, see for example Maryland Board of Natural Resources, 19th Annual Report ofthe Maryland Board ofNatural Resources (Annapolis MD: Maryland Board of Natural Resources, 1962).
7 Chambers, Heritage Matters: Heritage, Culture, History, and Chesapeake Bay.
8 Paul Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 19 May 2005, Ocean City, MD. 163
lower end of the boardwalk change to high-rise chain hotels with pools and finally gated
condo communities beyond 21st Street.
While on vacation, tourists ate the local seafood delicacies, including steamed whole crabs and Maryland crab cakes, and inside the Chesapeake region, all classes of people ate blue crabs and crab cakes during the summers.9 Before and after the repeal of
Prohibition, whole steamed crabs were sold individually as snacks by street vendors to
dock and factory workers in Baltimore who washed them down with locally brewed
beer. 1° Crab cakes were given away as part of free lunches offered by beer gardens to
entice laborers in to drink. The region's fancy hotels and the steamboats that plied the
Chesapeake served both steamed crabs and crab cakes at much higher prices as part of
fine dining. However, as described in Chapter Three, the expansion of the suburbs after
World War II created a new restaurant-the crab house. These family-style restaurants
served spiced steamed crabs by the dozen, Maryland crab cakes, and other Chesapeake
seafood dishes and sprang up in urban and tourist areas around the Bay.
Making Phillips a Destination
In 1955, Brice and Shirley Phillips were second generation owners and managers
of A. E. Phillips, a family-run crabmeat packer on Hoopers Island in Dorchester County,
much like J.M. Clayton.11 Shirley remembered Brice's father opened the factory in 1914
9 Chambers, Heritage Matters: Heritage, Culture, History, and Chesapeake Bay.
10 The locally brewed beer was National Bohemian and during prohibition crab sales suffered. Information on consumption compiled from Ferdinand Latrobe, "Saving the Chesapeake Bay Crab: Wasteful Practices Threaten a Great Natural Resource" 1935; Lloyd Tyler, "The Blue Crab Industry of the Chesapeake Bay: Technological Developments from 1873-1983" (PhD Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1983).
11 As of2007, the original A. E. Phillips packing house still operated on Hooper's Island. 164 after working as a waterman and schooner captain, and like his father, Brice had crabbed before working in the factory. 12 Shirley had picked crabs at the Phillips factory to pay for college and married Brice when she returned to the island. As the owners, the couple had a standing order with Gordon's Crab House restaurant in Baltimore to deliver several bushels of whole steamed crabs every Friday. However, on several occasions that summer Shirley and Steve arrived at Gordons with their crabs only to learn that the restaurant had already bought all the crabs they needed:
Three or five times we took our crabs up on a Friday and were told they had bought all they needed from other picking houses. We had to bring them all the way back to Hooper's Island and pick them for crabmeat, which didn't bring as much money. We got stuck with them. 13
Packing houses culled the Jimmies from watermen's catch and sold them to crab houses for prices up to seventy percent more than smaller crabs, making Jimmies a profit loss when used for crabmeat.14 When the crab packing season ended in November, Shirley and Brice decided to compete with the crab house restaurants and open their own as a way to insure a market for their steamed crabs. 15 They began looking at properties and as
Shirley reasoned "since crabs were only a summer time industry, we decided that Ocean
12 Shirley Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 19 May 2005, Ocean City, MD.
13 Ibid.
14 Dale Cathell, Empires ofthe Crab: the Phillips Odyssey (Bloomington: Authorhouse Publishing, 2006).
15 Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 165
City would be the best place because it was only a summertime place and we could go back to the island in winter."16
According to Shirley, in 1956 anything north of 12th street in Ocean City was considered the "boonies," but Phillips Crab House opened that summer on 21st street, right next door to Griffins Crab House. 17 The first year, Phillips was only a carry-out place, and Shirley operated the restaurant Memorial Day to Labor Day when Ocean City had a summertime population of fifty thousand people, returning to Hooper's Island at the end of the tourist season. 18 In the second year they added a picnic table outside and
Maryland crab cakes to the menu. The crab cakes were so successful that the menu expanded to include other crabmeat dishes such as crab soup and crab imperials.
My fieldwork on the Eastern Shore taught me that recipes for Maryland crab cakes differ county to county, and most local people can tell where a crab cake comes from by the taste of the seasonings used. Phillips' crab cake recipe is a combination of recipes from Brice and Shirley's mothers and thus represents Hooper's Island style
Maryland crab cakes. 19 Both mothers began working in the 21st street restaurant in 1960 creating recipes to expand the menu. In the early days of the restaurant, Shirley's mother,
Lillie Flowers, made the crab cakes by hand, forming them in her left palm-3.5 ounces, hand formed and made mostly from lump grade crabmeat.20 This became the standard
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 Cathell, Empires ofthe Crab: the Phillips Odyssey.
19 Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
2°Cathell, Empires of the Crab: the Phillips Odyssey. 166 size for Phillips restaurant crab cakes as they expanded the 21st street building several times to accommodate the growing number of customers.21
By 1964 Phillips Crab House had become Phillips Seafood Restaurant, buying out
Griffins Crab House next door in order to add another dining room. 22 The expansion gave Phillips a seating capacity of 1400 people and made the restaurant the largest in the state of Maryland. Phillips's restaurant had grown from a carry-out with picnic tables to a Dinner House restaurant-an upscale destination restaurant found in resort areas.23
Coastal dinner house restaurants specialized in local and regional seafood and packaged the local culture as part of the decor, inviting customers "to purchase a sense of place as well as food."24 Phillips' menus described the family's history as watermen and seafood processors, ensuring customers that the crabs were fresh out of the Chesapeake and processed in their plant on Hooper's Island. The interior was decorated with push pedal sewing tables, tiffany lamps, crabbing and oystering gear, and photos ofwatermen.25
This exhibit of antiques alongside the Chesapeake's fishing communities communicated their authenticity and made eating at Phillips like eating "down the island," as Dorchester county residents say. Tourists experienced a distinctive place at Phillips. The exterior of the restaurant was distinctly English Tudor, which Jakle and Sculle explain was a popular
21 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD.
22 Details on the expansion from Cathell, Empires ofthe Crab: the Phillips Odyssey.
23 Jakle and Sculle list Phillps as an example, see John Jakle and Keith Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Baltimore: Johns Hopkiris University Press, 1999).
24 Ibid., 233.
25 Cathell, Empires of the Crab: the Phillips Odyssey. 167
style found at upscale resorts and seafood chain restaurants in the 1960s because of the
popularity of British culture (See Figure 11).26
Brice and Shirley could not expand the 21st Street Crab House anymore and
instead opened two new restaurants in 1973 and 1977 in North Ocean City.27 By this
time, Phillips and Ocean City were destinations in their own right. The seaside town had
grown from a small retreat for the mid-Atlantic's wealthy families to a major vacation
destination for middle and working class families from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
For many tourists, their vacation was complete without eating a Maryland crab cake at
Phillips, and the restaurant had a seventy eight percent rate for repeat business. 28
Figure 11. The original Phillips 21st Street Crab House complete with Tudor exterior. Source: photo by the author.
26 Jakie and Sculle, Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age.
27 Cathell, Empires ofthe Crab: the Phillips Odyssey.
28 Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 168
Making Baltimore a Destination
In 1978 Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer, a long-time customer of
Phillips, asked the family to open a restaurant in Baltimore as part of the redevelopment of the city's Inner Harbor.29 Beginning in the 1880s, the Chesapeake's seafood industry, along with the Eastern Shore's vegetable farms, had transformed Baltimore's inner harbor into the center of the nation's canning industry, garnering the city the nickname
"the front office of civilization" because Baltimore showed the world it could eat whatever it wanted whenever it wanted (See Figure 12).30 However, after World War II the shallow harbor could not accommodate the large container ships introduced in the shipping industry, and inner harbor fell into decay.31 The harbor's piers and warehouses grew increasingly idle and began to rot. Downtown Baltimore also declined as white middle class and working class residents began to move to the growing suburbs, leaving the city with a declining tax base. More significantly, white residents no longer shopped
29 C. Fraser Smith, William Donald Schaefer: a Political Biography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999); Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault. Schaefer, a Democrat, was Governor of Maryland from 1987 through 1995 and supported George H. W. Bush in the presidential election of 1992. In 1991 he publicly called the Eastern Shore a "shithouse". Schaefer became Comptroller of Maryland in 1998.
30 Baltimore produced one third of all the canned goods consumed in the United States by 1880, including canned local vegetables and seafood, as well as tropical fruits shipped in from the Caribbean and Hawaii. Baltimore remained the nation's canning center until the 1920s when rail freight charges, emerging unions, and the agricultural and canning industry in California made the city an unprofitable location for canning. For more on Baltimore's canneries, see Eleanor S. Bruchey, "The Development of Baltimore Business, 1880-1914, part l," Maryland Historical Magazine 64, no. 1 (1969); Ed Kee, Saving Our Harvest: The Story ofthe Mid-Atlantic Region's Canning and Freezing Industry (Baltimore, MD: CTI Publications, 2006); Earl Chapin May, The Canning Clan (New York: MacMillon, 1937).
31 Information on the decline of the harbor and its impacts from Petra Wagner, "The Construction of Urban Tourism Space: Baltimore's Inner Harbor, 1964-1990" (MA Thesis University of Maryland, College Park, 1996). 169 in downtown Baltimore and the city, once known for fashionable shopping, now lost its retail centers and department stores as they moved to the suburbs as well.
Figure 12. Baltimore Harbor, circa 1934, looking south toward Federal Hill and down Light Street. Phillips' HarborPlace restaurant and entertainment center will be built where the steamboats are at the bottom right of the photo. Source: courtesy of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum.
Baltimore increasingly became a predominantly poor, African American city and in 1954 a group of Baltimore business owners and real estate developers formed the greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) with the goal of revitalizing downtown and attracting affluent, preferably white, shoppers and tourists back to Baltimore. 32 GBC established the Charles Center Corporation, a quasi public private entity funded by federal and state tax dollars, and throughout the 1970s assembled 250 acres of inner harbor waterfront property through eminent domain-declaring all properties derelict even if occupied. Much of the plan was well underway in 1976 having dislodged the predominantly African American City Fair from the harbor and securing the exhibit of
32 On the development and activities of the GBC, see Ibid; David Wallace, Urban Planning My Way: from Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond (Washington DC: Planners Press American Planners Association, 2004). 170
America's Tall Ships for the Bicentennial.33 Despite the tourists flocking to the ships, the harbor retained much of its rough and tumble commercial dock character. 34
Schaefer and the GBC hired Jim Rouse to redevelop the once industrial waterfront area. Rouse, a native of the Eastern Shore, was an urban planner and real estate developer credited with creating and fmancing the first Federal Housing Authority (FHA) home loans in the 1940s and 1950s and the earliest strip malls in the United States.35
Rouses planned communities had spawned suburban growth and reapportionment. In the early 1970s, Rouse had redeveloped Fanueil Hall in Boston, a once commercial waterfront market, into a major tourist destination by pioneering the concept of a "festival market place"-pavilions containing shops, entertainment, restaurants, and other attractions.
Rouse's plan for Baltimore's Inner Harbor was to build a festival market place on the city's waterfront.36 Schaefer knew that a Phillips restaurant would attract tourists, according to Paul Wall who managed the restaurants at the time:
33 See Erve Chambers, Native Tours: the Anthropology of Travel and Tourism (Prospect Heights IL: Waveland Press, 2000).
34 Wallace, Urban Planning My Way: from Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond.
35 Jim Rouse was one of the founding members ofGBC. He served on several Presidential task forces, including President Dwight Eisenhower's Task Force on Housing in 1952 and on President Ronald Reagan's Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives in 1982 and in 1987 he chaired the National Housing Task Force. The report from this task force formed the basis for comprehensive housing legislation undertaken by President George Bush in 1990. See National Association of Real Estate Investment Trust, "A Glimpse at Rouse's History," n.d., available from http://www.nareit.com/portfoliomag/default.shtml, (accessed 1June2005).
36 Wallace, Urban Planning My Way: from Baltimore's Inner Harbor to Lower Manhattan and Beyond. 171
They wanted Phillips to be the anchor of the new Inner Harbor. Phillips' customers were all from Baltimore and Pennsylvania, DC and surrounding areas and they knew that Phillips would attract people downtown.37
During the construction ofRouse's HarborPlace, Shirley Phillips went on tour to promote
Baltimore as a destination by promoting Phillips and her "old family recipe" crab cakes as the "Taste of Tradition" of the Chesapeake.38 In contrast to the Phillips restaurants in
Ocean City, the HarborPlace architecture resembled a modem mall and thus did not look like a unique destination. The Phillips family history and its connection to watermen, schooner captains, and home-style recipes lent authenticity and uniqueness to the new, modernized Inner Harbor. Economic development and state heritage merged into a family narrative that emphasized the popular image of watermen and the Eastern Shore as independent with a strong work ethic and an isolated place governed by tradition.
Harbor Place and Phillip's fourth restaurant opened on July 2nd 1980 to fifty thousand waiting customers who waited in line until after midnight to eat Shirley's famous crab cakes.39 By the end of the first week, the prep room of the HarborPlace restaurant did not have the capacity to make enough crab cakes to fill orders. The kitchen of the 21st Street restaurant in Ocean City began mass producing crab cakes and other crab dishes, "sending six or seven thousand crab cakes a day to HarborPlace on refrigerated trucks. "40 This centralized production helped the HarborPlace restaurant serve high volumes of tourists year round. By 1985 Phillips HarborPlace restaurant
37 Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
38 Ibid.
39 Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
4°Cathell, Empires ofthe Crab: the Phillips Odyssey, 225. 172 served an average of 25,000 people a day and was the fifth largest restaurant in sales in the United States (See Figure 13).41
The Inner Harbor redevelopment project gave Baltimore a new image and was declared a success, receiving numerous international awards for excellence as model for urban waterfront development.42 The London Sunday Times wrote:
Baltimore, despite soaring unemployment, boldly turned its derelict harbor into a playground. Tourists meant shopping, catering, and transport. This in turn meant construction, distribution, and manufacturing-leading to more jobs, more residents, more activity. The decay of Baltimore slowed, halted, and then turned back. The harbor area is now among America's top tourist draws and urban unemployment is falling fast. 43
Tourism was the second largest industry in Baltimore and the city's new image propelled
Mayor Schaeffer into the office of Governor in 1986 where he set about expanding his ideas of tourism and revitalization across the state.44 But the London Times and other impressions of Baltimore's success and growing affluence were not quite accurate.
Baltimore remained the fifth worst city in which to live in the United States due to poverty, unemployment, low education, and high crime rates.45 The rapid economic growth of the city was not redistributed to the city's neighborhoods, and as Harvey
41 Caroline Mayer, "Phillips Restaurants Grow Fat on Seafood: Ocean City Chain Serves 25,000 a Day in Summer Phillips' Road to Profits Is Paved With Crab Shells," Washington Post, 12 August 1985.
42 Wagner, "The Construction of Urban Tourism Space: Baltimore's Inner Harbor, 1964-1990".
43 Quoted in David Harvey, "A View from Federal Hill," in The Baltimore Book: New Views from Local History, ed. Elizabeth Fee, Linda Shopes, and Linda Zeidman (Philadelphia: Temple University, 1981), 248.
44 Smith, William Donald Schaefer: a Political Biography.
45 Harvey, "A View from Federal Hill." 173 details, much of the money flowed into and then out of the Inner Harbor back to corporations in the United States and foreign countries.46
Figure 13. Above, Left: Phillips HarborPlace restaurant on the bottom left of the photo. Right: Rouse's original pavilion on the left of the tall ship where steamboats used to dock. Source: Photos by the author.
Baltimore's waterfront redevelopment recipe became known as Rousification and was repeated in other cities, including Norfolk and Washington DC.47 Phillips was asked to open new restaurants in these cities, and their Flagship restaurant opened in
Washington DC in 1985, but Washingtonians were not as quick to flock to Phillips.48
Brice and Shirley had given their son Steve Phillips control of the overall management of their expanding restaurant chain and, in an effort to attract customers, Steve converted the
Flagship restaurant to an all-you-can-eat-buffet. According to Paul Wall:
46 Ibid.
47 Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007); Wagner, "The Construction of Urban Tourism Space: Baltimore's Inner Harbor, 1964-1990".
48 Details on the opening of the DC restaurant from Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 174
That worked, it was very popular because people think they are getting a good value. They get to taste a little of everything and eat as much as they like for a set price.49
The buffet system succeeded with support from tour operators who regularly brought their busloads of tourists to Phillips Flagship for a taste of tradition, and Steve converted the remaining restaurants to all-you-can-eat-buffets as well.50 But all-you-can-eat-buffets are not about place or taste, and instead exemplify our dominant American foodview and its preoccupation with volume and cheapness-a good deal. 51 Either as crab cakes on the all-you-can-eat buffets or as soups and stuffings, crabmeat amounted to sixty-five percent of Phillips' total restaurant sales by the mid 1980s, requiring high volumes of crabmeat. 52
However, sourcing crabmeat became increasingly competitive as other restaurants began featuring Maryland crab cakes while the domestic quality convention made standardization and expansion problematic.
All-You-Can-Eat Redevelopment
As the Brooks brothers described in Chapter Three, crabmeat packers saw their business increase in the 1980s. Baltimore's tourism expanded the popularity of crab cakes and other restaurants and manufacturers began offering Maryland crab cakes year round, creating intense competition for lump meat. However, chain restaurants plan menus in advance requiring consistent, predictable deliveries of raw ingredients that are
49 Ibid.
50 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
51 Amy Trubek, The Taste ofPlace: A Cultural Journey into Terroir (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
52 Mayer, "Phillips Restaurants Grow Fat on Seafood: Ocean City Chain Serves 25,000 a Day in Summer Phillips' Road to Profits Is Paved With Crab Shells." 175 uniform in quality and have stable prices. Uniformity reduces prep time and costs in the kitchen while stable pricing structures make it easier to plan menus and project expenses and income. Phillips and other high volume restaurants received these conveniences when they ordered frozen farmed shrimp from seafood distributors and chicken or other foods from distributors like Sysco or US Foodservice.53 For crabmeat, however, Phillips and other restaurants still had to make daily phone calls to crabmeat packers to see who had crabmeat and to negotiate prices. Both situations-increasing competition and
standardization of quality-became central to the expansion of tourism and Phillips.
Competing for Crabs
Phillips' restaurants had transformed from destinations into economic growth models and state heritage symbols, promising the experience of authenticity, traditional
Chesapeake living, and a taste of the past to diners. The centerpiece of this promise was
Shirley's Maryland crab cakes made from crabmeat sourced under a domestic quality convention. After the opening of HarborPlace, Phillips decided to consolidate purchasing for the restaurants under Lloyd Byrd, who had started with the 21st Street restaurant in
1973 and became Director of Operations for the chain in 1979. 54 Lloyd described the reason for restructuring purchasing:
It gets real nuts particularly in a restaurant that will seat 1400 people and with HarborPlace so busy, the company was growing and using lots of seafood, about six or seven million dollars worth of seafood and 450 thousand pounds of crabmeat a year. But each restaurant was buying its own seafood from different
53 Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
54 Ibid. 176
vendors and nobody had sat down and looked at the costs of that. We just needed to consolidate purchasing. 55
This system had two benefits, according to Lloyd. First, the 21st street restaurant took on more responsibility for centralized crab cake production to insure uniformity and reduce costs as Shirley's family recipe became the standard for taste. Second, consolidated purchasing meant Phillips' restaurants were not competing with each other for crabmeat.
However, competition for the resource came from other restaurants and sources.
McDonalds began selling a "McCrab Cake Sandwich" in the Chesapeake region made from Chesapeake crabmeat. 56 The crab cakes were produced by Seawatch
International on the Eastern Shore and as project manager Norman Whittington remembered:
By 1987 regional McDonald's stores were serving crab cake sandwiches using all domestic meat. This amounted to forty percent of the chain's sales for the region so it was incredibly popular. 57
In addition, Chesapeake-based companies began making frozen Maryland crab cakes for distribution across the country. For example, M & I Seafood in Baltimore began buying large quantities of crabmeat from J.M. Clayton in order to sell their Maryland crab cakes on the home shopping cable network Quality, Value, Convenience (QVC).58 Conversely,
Chesapeake packer Handy Seafoods began selling soft shell crabs and sponge crabs for
55 Ibid.
56 Norman Whittington III, Director oflntemational Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 28 October 2005, Berlin, MD.
57 Ibid.
58 Jack Brooks, Bill Brooks, and Joe Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 11 January 2006, Cambridge, MD. 177 export to Japan (See Figure 14).59 As new competitors entered the market, competition for the crabs intensified while tourism soared.
Figure 14. Sponge crabs for sale at the DC Fish Market in 2007. Source: Photo by the author.
Increased competition for crabs centered on controlling the distribution of female crabs used in the packing plants. Even though the first Chesapeake Bay Agreement was signed in 1980 when HarborPlace opened, Maryland-in an uncharacteristic move- repealed its seven decades old ban on the harvest of sponge crabs in 1982.60 The state's harvest of female crabs increased sixty-one percent between 1982 and 1985. 61 Packing houses relied extensively on female crabs to produce crabmeat since watermen diverted
59 Carol Haltaman, "Industry Considerations in HACCP Program Implementation," in Fish Inspection, Quality Control and HACCP: a Global Focus, ed. Roy E. Martin, Collette Robert L., and Slavin Joseph W. (Arlington, VA: Techomic, 1997). Fish roe, including crabs, is a main feature of Asian cuisine and these delicacies command a high price. In 1988,Taiyo Oil Company, Ltd. of Tokyo Japan bought Handy and increased exports of crabs.
60 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking of Blue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 1999): available from http://mddnr.chesapeakebay.net/mdcomfish/crab/CRABREGREV3.htm (accessed 31January2006).
61 Percentage calculated based on harvest statistics as reported in L. J. Rugolo, K.S. Knotts, and AM. Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery," Journal ofShellfish Research 17, no. 2 (1998). 178
more and more male crabs to the basket trade for crab house restaurants and backyard
crab feasts. Relaxed regulations also allowed watermen to set and harvest an unlimited
number of crab pots and the size of the crab pots increased.62
Table 8. Blue Crab Landings, 1950-1990
400.00 "Oc"' ::> 350.00 8. 0 300.00 l!! ~ 250.00 -National ~ Landings 200.00 Chesapeake 150.00 Landings
100.00 ;·,, -Maryland Landings 50.00
Source: Data from U.S. Department of Commerce. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Marine Fisheries Service. Blue Crab: Hard Crab Landings, 1950-2006. Silver Spring, MD: Fisheries Statistics Division, n.d. Available from http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/stl/commercial/landings/annual_landings.html (accessed 11 March 2007).
This led to some of the highest harvest levels for blue crabs in the Chesapeake
since 1966, a trend that continued into the early 1990s.63 Eager to meet the volume
demands of customers, Chesapeake watermen and crabmeat packers broke the 1980s
records by harvesting 99,792,849 million pounds of blue crabs in 1990 and 111,168,011
62 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking of Blue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 (accessed.).
63U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, lmported Crabmeat into Norfolk, 1996-2006 (Silver Spring, MD: Fisheries Statistics Division, 2007): available from http://www.st.nmfs.gov/stl /trade/monthly_data/TradeDataDistrictMonthSummary.html (accessed 17 September 2007). 179 million in 1993.64 Overall, the trend was toward slightly increased levels nationally while the levels in the Chesapeake and Maryland remained relatively stable, but still historically high (See Table 8).
Increased harvest levels, however, did not lead to decreased dockside prices of crabs as the theory of supply and demand would dictate. Instead, the dockside price rose steadily throughout the 1980s, and from 1990 to 1995 the value jumped significantly, increasing fifty-three percent while the national dockside value increased eighty-nine percent making blue crabs the seventh most valuable fishery in the Unites States
(See Table 9). 65 Throughout the 1980s, the growing popularity of Maryland crab cakes and the increased value of crabmeat attracted new people to the crabmeat industry who opened packing houses in the Chesapeake and North Carolina for the first time in thirty years.66 Bob Stryker, owner of Ocean Technology, recalled that the new companies competed for the harvest of blue crabs, as watermen sold their bushels to the highest bidder:
You have crabbers holding them [the packing houses] at ransom "If you don't give me ninety cents, I'm going to go to this guy." Then they pitch every one of them against each other, and what happens is the crabber is the one that's getting fat but the house has got absolutely no margin.67
64Ibid.(accessed.).
65 The increased value and national ranking was calculated based on data from the National Marine Fisheries Service for all species individually. For blue crab, see U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, Blue Crab: Hard Crab Landings, 1950-2006 (Silver Spring, MD: Fisheries Statistics Division, n.d.): available from http://www.st.mnfs.noaa.gov/stl/commercial/landings/annual_landings.html (accessed 11March2007).
66 U.S. International Trade Commission, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., Investigation No. TA-201-71, Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Petitioner's Prehearing Briefon the Question ofInjury, 12 June 2000.
67 Bob Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault, l April 2005, Arnold, MD. Ocean Tech had a crabmeat plant in North Carolina, but began importing crabmeat from Mexico in 1989. 180
Table 9. Value of Hard Crab Landings for Blue Crab, 1980-1995
$180.00
~ $160.00 -N.:itional Value :8 $140.00 c Hard Crabs 'S $120.00 ~ 0 $100.00 ~ Chesapeake .; $80.00 Value Hard .a Crabs ~ $60.00 cu ~ $40.00 -Maryland """l:i c $20.00 Value Hard Crabs $- 0 q- 00 0 N q- 00 ""00 00 '°00 00 CT\ CT\ CT\ en.... C'>.... "'..... °'.... "'..... "'..... "'..... "'.....
Source: Data from U.S. Department of Commerce. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Marine Fisheries Service. Blue Crab: Hard Crab Landings, 1950-2006. Silver Spring, MD: Fisheries Statistics Division, n.d. Available from http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st 1/commercial/landings/annual_ landings.html (accessed 11 March 2007).
The newer companies invested in technology such as cryogenic freezing while older companies increased the production of pasteurized crabmeat during the winter months until capital expenditures reached their peak in 1995 at $8,666,000.68 Increased production of frozen and pasteurized crabmeat expanded the distribution area and led to new customers, including larger chain restaurants and distribution through food service channels such as Sysco, which did not normally handle fresh crabmeat. 69 The increased value of crabs and facility upgrades increased the cost of a pound of fresh crabmeat, which was passed on to customers (distributors and restaurants), and consumers, but
68 Investigation No. TA-201-71, Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Petitioner's Prehearing Brief on the Question ofInjury, 36. See also James Johnson, David Green, and Roy Martin, "Industry Perspectives: the Hard Blue Crab Fishery, Atlantic and Gulf states," Journal ofShellfish Research 17, no. 2 (1998).
69 U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U.S. International Trade Commission, 15 June 2000. 181 despite the price increases the consumption of picked crabmeat increased ten percent between 1990 and 1995. 70
By 1988 Maryland's Department ofNatural Resources and the Chesapeake Bay
Commission began to call for bi-state regulations, including limits on the amount of crabs harvested. 71 This did not materialize and, instead, Maryland reinstated its ban on harvesting sponge crabs in 1989.72 Under these conditions, Phillips frequently removed crab cakes and other crabmeat dishes from the menu from January to March because they could not acquire enough crabmeat. 73 This made it increasingly difficult to plan menus and expand Phillips' brand. More importantly, the increased value of crabmeat and the lack of control over the distribution of the harvest inhibited the company's plan to expand their brand. However, Lloyd recounted that earlier efforts had not been successful:
When I consolidated purchasing I inherited something called Phillips Foods and Phillips Foods was cocktail sauce and tartar sauce made by Marzetta and we had one customer-Super Giant. That was it. And Brice Phillips was always asking me "How's the cocktail and tartar sauce going?" and "When are we going to sell some more cocktail and tartar sauce?" you know. I used to call our broker in Baltimore and say, "How's the cocktail and tartar sauce going?" and he told me one day, "Listen don't ever call me anymore and ask me how the cocktail and tartar sauce is sellin~.'' He said, "You don't have what we in the retail business call a product line." 4
70 Percentage increase based on per capita consumption data from U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, U. S. Annual per Capita Consumption ofCommercial Fish and Shellfish, 1910-2005 (Silver Spring, MD: 2005): available from www.st.nmfs.gov/stl/fus/fus05/08_perita2005.pdf(accessed 1June2006).
71 Associated Press, "Watermen Assail Proposed Limit on Blue Crabs," Washington Post, 17 July 1989; Ed Bruske, "Talk of Limits on Crabs Rwnbles Over the Bay," Washington Post, 13 June 1989.
72 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking of Blue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 (accessed.
73 Jon Goldstein, "King Crab: An Interview with Mark Sneed of Phillips Foods," Baltimore Sun Sunspot News, 2 July 2001.
74 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 182
Brice, Steve, and Lloyd decided to create a product line based on Phillips' main product-Maryland crab cakes-that would maintain the restaurant quality characteristics their customers had come to expect.
However, producing a restaurant quality crab cake for the retail market posed some problems according to Lloyd:
We wanted restaurant grade products for the retail industry and we got a quick lesson in retailing and margins. When you're dealing with a retail business, first you gotta go buy a product and have it co-packed. Next you got to get a broker and they want start up money and marketing money and stuff like that and then they want to make a thirty-five or forty percent margin. So when you do retail, and particularly with really expensive raw materials that go into it, you have to start at the other end and say "Well what would Joe Customer be willing to pay if they bought two retail crab cakes that were restaurant quality crab cakes?" and then you have to take those numbers and work backwards all the way down and see if it's possible to make a margin and the answer is really simple: you can't make retail product using domestic crabmeat, the numbers just don't work. Phillips owned two plants on Hoopers Island and Deals Island, but we couldn't produce it in our own plants cheap enough to use it for retail. 75
The high value of the resource made lump and backfin grades too expensive to use in restaurant quality crab cakes. Lloyd and Steve reasoned that American consumers, accustomed to cheap and abundant food, would not pay for the added cost of taste and locality. However, this was not the only problem Phillips, and others faced.
Quality and Safety
Mass tourism had led to mass produced crab cakes in the Chesapeake region.
Increasingly Phillips and their competitors demanded not only regular, predictable deliveries of crabmeat but standardized forms of quality. Crabmeat needed to be interchangeable between packing houses, but this was not characteristic of the domestic
75 Ibid. 183 quality convention. The major complaints from Lloyd and other purchasing agents were rooted in the characteristics of the domestic quality convention that had created the restaurant quality crab cake: proprietary grading, hand-picked and packed directly into the can, and fresh crabmeat. But for Lloyd, Norman, and other buyers these traits now translated into inconsistent grading, shell fragments, and perishability. Quality concerns were exacerbated by the labor shortage described in Chapter Three and the industry's dependence on hand-picked crabmeat. At the same time that quality concerns increased, so too did concerns over safety, and several frozen crab cake manufacturers on the
Eastern Shore took part in the early pilot study for HACCP, but this did not include
Chesapeake crab packers. 76
Phillips' old family recipe called for backfm and jumbo lump crabmeat, and as
Lloyd has described contained seventy percent crabmeat. Grading and consistency were not problems when Phillips was a small family restaurant buying crabmeat from their own packinghouse and from family friend J.C. Tolley at Meredith and Meredith in
Dorchester County. By the late 1980s the restaurants sold over 2800 crab cakes a day and required more crabmeat than their standing order of 30,000 pounds could produce. 77
Phillips began sourcing crabmeat from packers in North Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, especially in the winter and spring when Chesapeake packing houses were not operating.
76 Haltaman, "Industry Considerations in HACCP Program Implementation."; U.S. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Marine Fisheries Service, HACCP Regulatory Model for Blue Crab, (Pascagoula, MS: Office of Trade and Industry Services, National Seafood Inspection Laboratory, 1990); Norman Whittington III, Director oflnternational Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 16 February 2007, Salisbury, MD.
77 Data on the amount of crabmeat purchased and its sources from Byrd, Fonner Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 184
But Lloyd, like other buyers, found the grading standards were not the same between packing companies or states:
I bought half million pounds of crab meat a year for fifteen years from everywhere domestically-Florida, the Carolinas, Maryland. What is Jumbo Lump? Jumbo Lump is a cup full ofBackfin with some Jumbo Lump on top and bottom. What's Backfin? Backfin is some Special with some Backfin on the top and bottom. What's Special? They don't have any Special if you start calling these plants-they got Jumbo Lump, they got Backfin at high prices but no Special, imagine that. That's where it goes, into the more expensive grades.78
The increased competition for crabmeat was for jumbo lump and backfin, which did not constitute the bulk of crabmeat production, and many packers substituted the special grade to fill orders. The mixed grading system also increased the shell content of crab cakes as the special grade contained more shell than backfin or lump.
For Phillips, this meant added labor as they not only made crab cakes for their own restaurants, but, as Lloyd revealed, sold pre-made crab cakes to other Ocean City restaurants:
We had a manufacturing room in Phillips Crab House, which did all the crab cakes and shipped them to the other restaurants on the beach and to our own. But there was a crew of about four women whose sole job it was in the restaurant to re-pick the crabmeat and get the shell out of it; big horrendous amount of shell. And we had to pay them by the hour to do that before we could use the crabmeat. 79
Inconsistent grading and high shell content had long been part of the domestic quality convention due to personal preferences and conflicting state health regulations.
However, by the 1980s repicking high volumes of crabmeat in a restaurant kitchen became a costly venture.
78 Ibid.
79 Ibid. 185
In addition, the labor shortage added a new dimension to quality control and production levels. The crab pickers had always been a flexible labor force, but by the
1980s the remaining women considered themselves independent contractors who worked on their own schedule. 8° From his visits to Phillips' crabmeat plant on Hooper's Island,
Lloyd remembered that:
Ten o'clock in the morning, ladies at Hoopers Island if they're watching 'As the World Tums' hell they just get up and leave; go watch TV. You might have ten carts of crabs there waiting to be picked they don't care. What you gonna do fire 'em? They walk right down the road to Ruark and start picking, they can pick anywhere on the island but you're trying to get some production figures going.81
Due to the scarcity of women's labor, packinghouse owners throughout the Chesapeake treated the remaining crab pickers as free lance workers, and were reluctant to impose any controls over labor, including quality controls. Jack Brooks described the position packers were in:
For years we didn't have a labor force that we could pull from and for a while different processors were fighting for pickers, so the tail was wagging the dog. When you call somebody in to say, "Hey, I've had a complaint on your crabmeat," they can go across town and pick crabmeat as well.82
For their part, crab pickers considered themselves contractors because they were seasonal workers who did not receive benefits. 83 As many packing house owners acknowledged
crab pickers became their own boss, setting their own hours and taking vacation days as
8°Kelly Feltault, ""We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers," Anthropology of Work Review 26, no. 1 (2005).
81 Byrd, Fonner Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
82 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
83 Feltault, '"'We're Our Own Boss": Gendered Class Consciousness and White Privilege Among Hooper's Island Crab Pickers." 186 desired: "Every week it was the same hardships. If you paid on a Thursday, half of your employees you wouldn't see on Friday" and "you just didn't get rid ofthem."84
Jay Newcomb, manager of Phillips' Hooper's Island packing house solved the labor shortage in 1990 when he hired women from Mexico under the Federal H2B visa worker program to pick crabs:
One day in 1990 I came to the plant and I had about two hundred bushels of crabs to pick and I had only three pickers. I just couldn't take it. We needed the crabmeat to fill orders and we had the crabs. That's not the way to do business. We tried hiring people from Washington DC and interviewed probably one hundred people, and one actually showed up to work. So I took the step of checking into migrant labor through the federal H2B program, filled out the paperwork and got approved. 85
All of the packing houses increased production from 1992 to 1995 when they operated at full picking capacity and in terms of the supply of crabs. 86 North Carolina and Maryland had the largest number of H2B visa workers and their production increases reflect the influx of new female labor while national production peaked in 1995 at 13, 728,980 pounds of crabmeat. 87 In comparing Chesapeake and Mexican crab pickers, Lloyd stated:
Mexican worker, if they had crabs to pick they picked for thirty-six hours until they fell right over because the more they picked the more money they made. It would never occur to them to say "We are just going to go watch TV for while."
84 Tim Howard, Retired owner, Maryland Crabmeat Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 1 January 1999, Tape number OH118, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Crisfield, MD.
85 Jay Newcomb, Manager, Phillips Crabmeat Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 14 April 1999, Tape number OH126, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Fishing Creek, Maryland. H2B visas are non-immigrant visas awarded to foreign nationals so they can enter the United States and work legally but only for seasonal jobs.
86 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission.
87 Data taken from Ablondi and others, The US. Blue Crab Industry (Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999). 187
So it's a bit of a work ethic, and things were good and everyone had a work force and things were chugging along there for a while. 88
H2B visa workers solved only one of the quality problems emerging from the domestic quality convention. Another was the perishability of fresh crabmeat.
Initially, mass tourism resolved the limited distribution of fresh crabmeat by bringing more consumers into the distribution area. However, Lloyd detailed the challenges that mass tourism presented to restaurants relying on fresh seafood:
Crabmeat is such a perishable product, you got seven days, maybe, before it goes bad. And in the restaurant business, what are the odds of you having an idiot working for you who is unloading trucks and leaving your product in the sun well, really good! And what're the odds of this idiot not rotating the crabmeat properly and older cases go to the back of the cooler where they'll spoil before you use them-well, damn good! And what if you're in Ocean City and its Spring and last year you did eighty million dollar in sales on this weekend and you gear up for the weekend, buy a lot of crabmeat, and all of a sudden it's bad weather and you're stuck with these cases of fresh crabmeat. What are going to do with them?89
Purchasing high volumes of fresh crabmeat increased a restaurants' financial risk due to spoilage and loss of product. They also had to deal with the microbiology of a fresh product as Lloyd described:
We make crab cakes with twelve pounds of crabmeat in batches of seventy-two at a time. Now if you put one can of crabmeat that had an excessive bacteria load in that batch, which certainly you wouldn't see the bacteria, all of a sudden you've injected seventy-two crab cakes with bad crabmeat and tomorrow at noon they are going to start getting watery and slimy and the whole sheet has to be thrown away. But you can take pasteurized crabmeat and make a crab cake with it and it will stay because the meat's basically bacteria free. 90
88 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid. 188
Similarly, companies like Seawatch International that made crab cakes for McDonalds, also faced the same quality problems and sought out pasteurized crabmeat for its safety features despite the product's association with low quality.
Seawatch and Handy Crabmeat Company participated in the voluntary pilot
HACCP program run by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) during the
1980s.91 Handy began the program in 1984 to meet the quality demands of the Japanese export market and produce consistent, export quality soft shelled crabs.92 The NMFS program emphasized all aspects of food quality, including safety, and plants were inspected based on a rating system-the higher a plant's rating, the fewer visits from inspectors. Because Seawatch made crab cakes, they needed to include the Chesapeake packing houses, but Norman revealed that suppliers were not part of the program:
At Seawatch in the eighties every item we processed had to operate under a HACCP plan, including making the crab cakes for McDonald's. When HACCP started, it was focused on the [manufacturing] factory, so the HACCP plan did not address the suppliers like packing houses. It was a requirement that they have their own HACCP plan and I had to verify that they did, but all it was, we had a signed memo saying that 'We do operate under HACCP.' So we still took it a step further with our own QC. All the crabmeat that came in we made sure was pasteurized so there would be a minimal chance of anything going wrong with the product. We were very diligent about checking the microbiological standards and the shell count but we relied more on our own QC testing than the packing houses because really, at that time, I mean domestic producers of crabmeat really didn't take HACCP too seriously.93
91 Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded.
92 Haltaman, "Industry Considerations in HACCP Program Implementation." Carol Haltaman is Vice President of Handy Crabmeat International.
93 Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded. 189
J.M. Clayton and other packers had supplied Campbell's Soup Company for decades without operating under HACCP even though Campbells had produced its food under
HACCP since 1971.94 This pattern of certifying only manufacturers, such as Seawatch, continued under the early HACCP programs, and Chesapeake and other US crabmeat packers would not become HACCP certified until 1997.
Betting on a Trip to Asia
Phillips became a destination and economic engine for redevelopment by branding the Maryland crab cake and becoming a symbol of state heritage. In the process, Maryland crab cakes were transformed into a major export commodity for the state of Maryland. However, by the late 1980s the domestic quality convention premised on the taste of fresh crabmeat was giving way to an industrial quality convention challenged by the competition for the natural resource, higher prices for crabs, and increased harvesting regulations. Phillips wanted to expand its brand but the costs of producing a restaurant quality crab cake combined with the quality and resource control issues had left Steve and Lloyd without a product line. In 1988, Lloyd made a bet with their shrimp distributor that would change how Phillips did business:
I was buying shrimp principally from one company and the guy I bought from was always traveling back and forth to Asia. And I kept saying to him, "When are you going to take me to Asia with you?" and he kept saying to me, "When you buy all of this size of shrimp." Well it turned out the next year I did-not because of the trip but because it was a very consistent product, very competitive price. So
94 J. Clayton Brooks, Retired Owner, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 22 March 1999, Tape number OH123.1 and OH123.2, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Cambridge, Maryland. 190
they guy worked out for us to have two free plane tickets to go to Thailand and the Philippines.95
The following year Lloyd Byrd and Steve Phillips went to the Philippines and Thailand
with their shrimp distributor who represented Pakfoods, one of Thailand's biggest shrimp
companies. The distributor showed them Thailand's shrimp ponds and Pakfoods' shrimp
·processing factories. 96 In the Philippines, Steve attended a seminar on doing business in
the Philippines for members of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), and a member
of the YPO agreed to show them the shrimp ponds in Nagros.97 Lloyd recalled what
happened on that trip:
While we were at one of the ponds we saw the workers eating some crabs for lunch-it was a Portunus crab. We tried it and the flavor was good, it picked like our crabs. We wanted to develop a source of crabmeat that would be good quality crabmeat and would be cheap crabmeat, and allow us to do these retail things and sell crab cakes to other restaurants on a bigger scale. But we couldn't even get enough crab to keep it on our menu during the winter, and we had no control over quality and safety. So we thought this crab could be a source of quality crabmeat.98
The crab they saw in Southeast Asia was Portunus pelagicus. A member of the
swimming crab family known as the blue swimming crab, Portunus crabs have the same
body structure as blue crabs, meaning they would produce lump meat.
In 1990, Lloyd became Director of International Operations for Phillips Foods,
and began setting up factories in Southeast Asia to export crabmeat back to the United
95 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
96 Ibid.
97 Phillips, Owner and President Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded.
98 Byrd, Former Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 191
States.99 Because of the distance in shipping and Phillips' intended usage of the crabmeat for value-added products, the company would have to pasteurize the crabmeat. Rather than co-pack, or subcontract, the production Lloyd and Steve decided they could better control quality and costs if they opened their own factories. Lloyd established the first factory in the Philippines, opening additional factories in Indonesia until the company entered Thailand in 1995. Lloyd Byrd left Phillips in 1996 to start Byrd International, which began exporting crabmeat from Thailand and Indonesia, along with Pakfoods, their initial guide to the seafood industry in Southeast Asia.
Summary
As a symbol of state heritage, Phillips' Maryland crab cakes helped remake
Baltimore's image from decayed industrial port city into recreational entertainment port by connecting the city's Inner Harbor to the Chesapeake. HarborPlace and Phillips combined the Chesapeake's popularity as a middle class recreational destination with images of watermen and seafood as folk culture, creating a unique destination for tourists where they vicariously consumed Eastern Shore living and nature. All-you-can-eat development extended the market for Chesapeake crabmeat by importing high volumes of tourists within easy shipping distance of the Bay's packing houses, and the industry began to expand for the first time in thirty years. Branding culture and place through tourism, however, hinged not only on commodifying Chesapeake resources, but also on gaining privileged access to supplies of crabmeat that met an American foodview and industrial quality convention. ·By the late 1980s, Phillips and other restaurants
99 Ibid. 192 increasingly demanded an industrial quality convention-industry-wide quality and
safety standards enforced through certifications and a stronger accountability mechanism.
These demands coincided with the beginning of the seafood scares in the late 1980s and debates over HACCP discussed in Chapter Two. Locally, Handy Seafood and Sea
Watch, which produced crab cakes for food service, participated in the early NMFS model HACCP program and helped to develop the crabmeat HACCP plan between 1992 and 1995. In the meantime, Phillips began to open its own plants overseas in order to obtain high volumes of cheaper crabmeat followed by Byrd International and Pakfoods.
The next chapter examines how these companies used HACCP to establish an industrial quality convention in Thailand and used reshaped the social and environmental relations that existed in the country's crabmeat industry. CHAPTERS
THAILAND: FROM CAT FOOD TO CRAB CAKE
Several kinds of excellent crabs abound in all coastal districts of Thailand. One, a swimming crab with a white-spotted green or blue shell, is similar to the celebrated blue crab of the Atlantic coast of the United States which supports an industry worth several million dollars.
Hugh Smith A Review ofthe Aquatic Resources and Fisheries of Siam
The office of the Managing Director for Pakfoods is on an upper floor of the company's Bangkok corporate headquarters and has a comer view of a new Tesco hyper mart, the world's fourth largest grocery retailer. 1 As I wait to meet with the Director, I watch the seafood trucks deliver frozen seafood to the Tesco and wonder what Hugh
Smith would think of Thailand's global seafood industry. Smith was the US
Commissioner of Fisheries from 1913 until he retired in 1922 to become the Advisor of
Fisheries to the King of Siam, eventually creating and directing the Thai Department of
Fisheries (DOF).2 In a 1925 report, Smith noted that Portunus pelagicus, known in
Thailand as puumaa, was not commercially developed like its US cousin, Callinectes sapidus. Both crabs are swimming crabs and possess similar body structure, including
1 Planet Retail, "Worldwide: Top 30 Grocery Retailers, 2006," PlantetRetail.com, 2007, available from http://www.planetretail.net/catalog/bulletin/198/198301.htm, (accessed 28 March 2008).
2 Joseph E. Taylor, Making Salmon: an Environmental History ofthe Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999).The preface of the report contains information on Smith's work in Thailand, see Hugh Smith, A Review ofthe Aquatic Resources and Fisheries ofSiam, with Plans and Recommendations for their Administration, Conservation, and Development (Bangkok: Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center, 1983 [1925]), Special Report No. 4. 193 194
the swimming fin and lump meat so prized by Chesapeake restaurants. By the 1980s, a few Thai companies used blue swimming crab to produce canned cat food and shelf- stable canned crabmeat (like tuna fish) for export to Western countries.3 However, puumaa remained primarily a local food, the staple of crab fried rice, whole curried crab,
Thai crab cakes (made with pork and chilis ), and the steamed egg sack of female crabs was a delicacy.4
This is not the case today. Puumaa has been transformed from a low value pet food into Thailand's latest NTC supporting the country's EOI strategies. Thailand's high value food exports have led the country's phenomenal economic growth during the
1990s. 5 Despite the 1997 financial crisis, the Thai seafood industry is still growing and remains dominated by the same family-owned transnational corporations that have controlled the industry since the 1960s.6 One of those companies is Pakfoods. Originally one of Thailand's largest frozen shrimp exporters, Pakfoods was the first Thai seafood company to add pasteurized crabmeat and frozen Maryland crab cakes to its export product line. 7 But in 2006 you can also find ready to eat crabmeat dumplings and Thai
3 Department of Fisheries, Fishery Inspection Auditor, Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 27 April 2006, Phunphim, Thailand.
4 Thai words have been Romanized under the Royal Thai General System of Transcription.
5 Steven Jaffee and P. Gordon, Exporting High Value Food Commodities: Success Stories from Developing Countries (Washington DC: World Bank, 1993), Discussion Paper 198.
6 This assessment is based on Thai Frozen Foods Association, Thirty-Six Years of the Thai Frozen Foods Association (Bangkok: Thammada Press, 2004).
7 Panisuan Chamnaanwet, Managing Director, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 22 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand. 195
crab cakes in Tesco and 7-11 stores throughout Thailand, like the one I am watching from the office.
The Managing Director, Dr. Chamnaanwet, enters and hands me his business card, and says "Call me Dr. Nick." Like many of the other Thai executives I have met, he has Americanized his name and speaks with a perfect mid-western American accent.
After thirty minutes of talking about the global seafood market, I ask him about the idea that globalization and HA CCP have made it easier to trade seafood around the world and what that means for Thailand. Dr. Nick tells me emphatically:
Look, the reality of globalization is this: it is not about free trade or easy trade. It is about traceability and differentiation of products-an opportunity for something you think is not worth anything to be worth something someplace else and who to trust and blame in that process. 8
Nick continues and explains how traceability and differentiation of products relate to the start of the crabmeat industry in Thailand:
It is not the availability of crab that created the industry here, or the lack of [crab] in America, but the need for infrastructure and quality control. And companies could not get that in America. The process became standardized here in Thailand; the fishery-the crab-was standardized, to regulate quality and provide traceability. 9
Dr. Nick understands that a scarcity of crabs in the Chesapeake did not lead Phillips to source crabmeat in Thailand. Instead, Phillips and Byrd came to Thailand to gain control of the natural resource and create an industrial quality convention. In the process of creating this supply chain, differentiating products came to mean standardized and traceable safety and quality that also differentiated suppliers.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid. 196
This chapter examines how Phillips, Byrd and Pakfoods together with the Thai state transformed puumaa from cat food to non-traditional commodity through HACCP.
As discussed in Chapter Two, HACCP combines science-based risk assessments with traceability systems to prevent and control hazards in the supply chain. Through the monitoring systems, companies control food hazards by controlling people's behavior and the environment, creating an industrial quality convention enforced through auditing the companies' records. In this chapter, I explore how these three companies used
HACCP to remake nature and people as controllable or uncontrollable by localizing
HACCP and embedding the networks and standards in existing class and gender relations that relocated risk at the village level. In the following chapter, I explore how the institutionalization of HACCP at the state level mixed with the characteristics of restaurant quality crab cakes to create new value systems that differentiated crabs and crab processors, leading to over exploitation of the resource and the marginalization of
Muslim crabmeat suppliers through Thai racial stereotypes and ideas of purity, hygiene, and safe seafood. However, Phillips entered Thailand at a turbulent time for the economy, and before moving forward we need to understand this in the context of fisheries development.
The Fifth Tiger and Seafood Exports
Phillips started operations in Thailand in 1995 when the country was one of the fastest growing economies in the world-the Fifth Tiger of the "Asian Miracle"-an economic boom that for some reaffirmed neoliberal reforms and for others challenged 197
them by pointing the way toward a modified, Asian path of development. 10 The Thai government had received structural adjustment loans from the World Bank in 1985 and, according to some, had become a model of neoliberal development, transitioning from national development to globalization by shifting from agricultural and small manufacturing for domestic consumption to an industrial/services economy and EOI. For others, the country's annual economic growth rate often percent between 1985 and 1996 was the result of strong state-managed growth, making Thailand a developmental state.
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Thailand's supporters became its critics focusing on the cause of the crisis and how to fix the Thai state through stronger neoliberal reforms.
Several scholars have acknowledged the limitations of this narrative; first pointing out that Thailand did not conform to the developmental state model because of the country's strong private capitalist class. 11 Second, this narrative is one of manufacturing, obscuring the role of Thailand's agro-food industry from an understanding of Thai neoliberal development.12 Agricultural globalization began in 1975 with increased exports, the development ofNTCs, and closer connections between farmers and Thai and foreign food corporations. 13 Studies on the post-financial crisis have shown that many of
10 World Bank, The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). For a discussion regarding how the World Bank report was interpreted in the two different ways outlined here, and its relation to the eventual financial crisis, see Jonathan Rigg, Southeast Asia: The Human Landscape ofModernization and Development (London: Routledge, 1997).
11 Chris Dixon, "The Causes of the Thai Economic Crisis: the Internal Perspective," Geoforum 32 (2001); James Glassman, Thailand at the Margins: The Internationalization ofthe State and the Transformation ofLabor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Ruth Mc Vey, ed., Money and Power in Provincial Thailand (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2000).
12 Jasper Goss and David Burch, "From Agricultural Modernisation to Agri-Food Globalization: the Waning of National Development in Thailand," Third World Quarterly 22, no. 6 (2001).
13 Ibid; Jaffee and Gordon, Exporting High Value Food Commodities: Success Stories from Developing Countries. 198
the neoliberal reforms instituted by the IMF after the financial crisis were unsuccessful because Thailand's Sino-Thai capitalist class sought to retain their power and their businesses, and did so through the election of Thaksin Shinawatra as Prime Minister in
2001. 14 While critical in rethinking our understanding of Thailand's development and class relations, this work has its own shortcomings in relation my research.
First, the agro-food industry is understood as agriculture and aquaculture, not capture fisheries. Second, I have not found any literature on Thailand's agricultural restructuring that has examined the role of food standards as a new development policy, yet Thailand's seafood industry adopted HACCP faster than any other food sector in the country or in Southeast Asia.15 Third, although there is an increasing amount of literature on Thailand's corporate and provincial elite, relatively little of this has made issues of race, gender, or religion in relation to class central to an analysis of the relationships across non-traditional commodity networks and the social impacts of Thailand's EOI development policies. 16 For example, studies on Thailand's shrimp farms located in
14 IMF reforms called for selling Thailand's major privately owned domestic corporations to foreign capital, see Kevin Hewison, "Neo-liberalism and Domestic Capital: The Political Outcomes of the Economic Crisis in Thailand" The Journal of Development Studies 41, no. 2 (2005); Kanishka Jayasuriya and Kevin Hewison, "The Antipolitics of Good Governance," Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2004).
15 Yeap Soon and Ira Hariano Eong, ed., The Application ofHACCP in the Fish Processing Industry in Southeast Asia 2000-2003 (Singapore: SEAFDEC Marine Fisheries Research Department,, 2003). Thai language documents promote the standards to encourage investment and market the products, but I have not found any critical examination of the standards in English or Thai.
16 See for example, Suehiro Akira, Capital Accumulation in Thailand 1855-1985 (Tokyo: Center for EastAsian Cultural Studies, 1989); Kevin Hewison, "Constitutions, Regimes and Power in Thailand," Democratization 14, no. 5 (2007); Anek Laothamatas, Business Associations and the New Political Economy of Thailand: from Bureaucratic Polity to Liberal Corporatism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); McVey, ed., Money and Power in Provincial Thailand. 199
southern Thailand portray people generically as villagers and small-scale fishers. 17 This is particularly problematic for Thailand's seafood industry concentrated in southern
Thailand, a region that is home to the country's largest Muslim population. 18 Muslims are primarily fishermen, but as I will discuss in Chapter Six they are not considered Thai by the state. Instead, we must acknowledge that a distinct class structure exists in the
Thai seafood industry dating back to the Thai monarchy and that this social structure has shaped not only the existing seafood networks in Thailand, but, under Thaksin, played a significant role in reshaping development, as I will discuss in the next chapter.
The Thai monarchy used the country's fisheries as a source of tax revenue. 19
Taxes were collected by Sino-Thai merchants who won the concession to process, sell, and collect taxes on fish harvested in specific districts by outbidding other Chinese merchants based on who could collect the most taxes. This tax farming system encouraged over exploitation as winners did not know if the rights would be renewed and thus harvested as much fish as possible. The system also promoted vertical integration as
Chinese merchant families intermarried with Chinese traders and developed export seafood companies. Although this system ended for a brief period under the anti-Chinese policies during the 1930s and 1940s, it returned by the late 1940s, when Thai military and political bureaucrats entered into business with existing Sino-Thai companies.
17 A review of literature on shrimp fanning and its social impacts in Thailand revealed that only one article out of a dozen mentioned that the villagers were Muslim, and only then in passing as part of community management strategies. This is pai1icularly so for English language works.
18 Michel Gilquin, The Muslims of Thailand (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002).
19 For a thorough discussion of this, see Akira, Capital Accumulation in Thailand 1855-1985. 200
Following the first World Bank mission to Thailand in 1957, the government started state-led development plans through the National Economic and Social
Development Board (NESDB) that supported domestic capital.2° From 1962 to 1971 the goal for the seafood industry under the First National Development Plan was to increase landings for domestic consumption, but plans since 1972 have targeted increased fisheries exports and aquaculture through infrastructure and subsidies that expanded fleets and cold storage facilities. 21 This increased Thailand's landings twenty-two percent a year from 1961 to the late 1970s, and Thailand became one of the world's top ten fishing nations. 22 The Sino-Thai families that owned cold storage companies expanded into multinational seafood corporations, beginning in the early 1970s with assistance from Japan's seafood corporations and development aid.23 However, sixty- four percent of the fishing fleet remained small-scale fishermen who worked from outboard motor boats and spent less than twelve hours at sea.24 Most of these fishermen were Muslim.
In 1987, as the seafood scares began in the United States, Thailand's seafood exports (especially tuna, shrimp, and squid) held the second largest growth rate of all
20 Pasuk Phongpaichit, "The Open Economy and Its Friends:. the Development of Thailand " Paci.fie Affairs 53, no. 3 (1980).
21 Olli-Pekka Ruohmaki, Fishermen No More?: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1999).
22 John Butcher, The Closing ofthe Frontier: a History of the Marine Fisheries ofSoutheast Asia c 1850 to 2000 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 2004).
23 Thai Frozen Foods Association, Thirty-Six Years ofthe Thai Frozen Foods Association.
24 Royal Thai Government, Ministry of the Interior, Fisheries Record of Thailand: 1957-1964, (Bangkok: Department of Fisheries, 1964); Rosaria Sabatella and Marie-Helene Kyprianon, Fishery Industry Profile: Thailand (Rome: UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2001 ). 201
industrial products in the country and were the largest agricultural export in a nation better known for rice production.25 However, Thailand found its new development leader
increasingly banned for chemicals and contaminants starting in the late 1980s in both the
United States and Europe.26 By 1993, the USFDA listed Thai canned tuna and frozen
shrimp as an "automatic detention" item, stating that more than fifty percent of the products did not meet standards for decomposition based on organoleptic testing-smell, taste, texture, color.27 Thai processors claimed the agency had no scientific basis for the
detentions, but imports of Thai canned tuna fish decreased substantially.28 Given their position as the world's seafood supplier, Thailand was disproportionately affected by
seafood scares in the U.S. and EU. As a result, HACCP became a central component in
Thailand's seafood development policy.
In 1991, the Thai DOF introduced a voluntary HACCP program with training
from the F AO and the USFDA targeting the top exports of shrimp, tuna, and squid.29 At the same time, the government began working closely with the Thai Frozen Foods
25 Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Guidelines and Targets for Fishery Products and Value Added Exports 1988, Group 5: Fisheries Products, (Bangkok: Commercial Economic Department, 1987).
26 For example, Spain banned squid because of cadmium levels that exceeded state levels, but not EU or US levels. See Bangkok Post Archives, "Spain Bans Imports of Canned Octopus," Bangkok Post, 5 April 1990; Clinic Marketing Co., Report from the Study on the Canned Seafood Industry in Thailand (Bangkok: Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Board oflnvestment, 1991).
27 Orapin Siripanich, Report on the Study ofthe Canned Seafood Industry of Thailand (Bangkok: Royal Thai Government, Ministry oflndustry, Board of Investment, Development and Planning Section, 1995).
28 Ibid.
29 Department of Fisheries, Director, Quality Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 13 July 2006, Bangkok, Thailand; S. Suwanrangsi, "HACCP Implementation in the Thai Fisheries Industry," in Making the Most ofHACCP: Learning from Other's Experience, ed. Tony Mayes and Sara Mortimore (Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing, 2001). 202
Association (TFFA), a trade association comprised of all the leading Thai seafood export companies.30 As part of this relationship, the TFFA created a joint government-industry team to negotiate trade problems, leading delegations to Europe, the United States, and
Codex meetings to help shape global and national seafood standards. As a result, the
TFFA and the Thai government created substantial infrastructure and streamlined comprehensive quality standards with regulatory authority split between several government agencies and the association.
First, the government required all seafood export companies (both domestic and foreign) to join the TFFA. The Association, in tum, required all members to adhere to the quality regulations of the organization, including HACCP certification.31 In 1992 the
DOF became the lead inspection, certification, and licensing agency responsible for approving HACCP plans, inspecting factories for compliance, and conducting chemical, biological, and physical inspections prior to export. 32 Unlike in the United States, the
DOF provided these services free to Thai and foreign companies. 33 In addition, the government established several new agencies to assist companies in creating HACCP plans, including the National Food Institute and the National Agricultural and Food
Products Standards Office.34 Second, the government invested in HACCP training for
30 Thai Frozen Foods Association, Thirty-Six Years ofthe Thai Frozen Foods Association.
31 Ibid.
32 Department of Fisheries, Fishery Inspection Auditor, Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault; Thai Frozen Foods Association, Thirty-Six Years ofthe Thai Frozen Foods Association.
33 Department of Fisheries, Director, Quality Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault.
34 These infrastructure investments are outlined in Bhanupong Nidhiprabha, SPS and Thailand's Exports ofProcessed Food (Bangkok: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, 2002); Thai Frozen Foods Association, Thirty-Six Years ofthe Thai Frozen Foods Association. 203
factory workers and food scientists, and established laboratories to test all seafood exports while Thai companies received funding through development projects to upgrade factories, transportation, and storage facilities. Rather than over capitalizing fisheries with new boats, the government invested in and subsidized the seafood processing industry.
Finally, the Thai seafood industry had undergone a consolidation period during the 1980s due to the government's industrial decentralization plans and the Board of
Investment (BOI) zoning policies that increased investment and development along
Thailand's Southern coasts (See Figure 15).35 Under BOI policies enacted in 1977, Thai- owned multi-national companies that relocated from Bangkok (Zone 1) to Songkhla
(Zone 3) received increased incentives from the government.36 As the larger companies in Bangkok bought out smaller seafood processors in Zone 3 cities of Songkhla and Surat
Thani, the government invested in port facilities and located the DOF inspection labs in these two provinces. By the 1990s, the city of Songkhla was one of the most concentrated areas of seafood production in Thailand where Pakfoods held three
subsidiaries in addition to their two in Bangkok. Songkhla provided Thai and foreign
companies with the most generous investment privileges, including exemptions from
income and import taxes; deductions for electricity, transportation, and water; and a
35 Pakphanang Coldstorage Public Company, Annual Report for 1998 (Bangkok: Thailand: Pakphanang Coldstorage Company Limited, 1999).
36 Ruohmaki, Fishermen No More?: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages. 204
twenty-five percent deduction for infrastructure installation and construction costs for
eight years.37
Figure 15. Map of Thailand showing the major crabmeat processing cities in the south.
Phillips took advantage of this infrastructure and, rather than co-pack
(subcontract) the production to a Thai company, opened its own factory in Songkhla.38
Phillips Seafood Thailand Limited received its BOI approval and investment privileges in
May, 1995, and the company had their first factory in Thailand operational by the end of the year.39 By this time, HACCP was mandatory for all seafood exports in Thailand, but
37 Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Board of Investment, BO! Investment Policies Since 2000 (Bangkok: 2000): available from http://www.boi.go.th/english/about/boi_policies.asp (accessed 20 March 2006).
38 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD.
39 Phillips Seafood Thailand, Record ofIncorporation Papers (Hat Yai: Thailand: Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Provincial Commercial Office 1994-2004). 205
specific plans for pasteurized crabmeat did not exist because it was not a high value export. U.S. companies took advantage of this growing infrastructure and BOI incentives, but also began shaping the standards directly related to crabmeat, and thus the relationships in the network.
Beating the Jungles for Crabs
My research assistant, NongOo, and I are driving to the coastal village of
Phumriang which lies a few kilometers east of the ancient city of Chaiyaa, once the trading capital of the Srivijaya Empire.40 Phumriang, along with the village of Don Sak, has become part of a network of villages that harvest puumaa and perform the initial crabmeat processing throughout southern Thailand for US and Thai corporations. Both villages lie across from each other on the Bay of Ban Dun in Surat Thani province.
According to Lloyd Byrd, the global crabmeat industry takes place in coastal villages like
Phumriang because it is an inshore fishery reliant on small-scale fishermen. However, on this March day in 2006 NongOo and I will learn how these inshore crab fisheries were
embedded in a complex network of social relationships when Phillips arrived in Thailand.
Phumriang is primarily a Muslim village while Don Sak is Buddhist, and the networks
connecting these fishing villages to national and global markets operated through a
domestic quality convention highly dependent on trust in long-term personal relationships
that were often based on kin and religious networks. In other words, Thai crabmeat
networks exhibited similar relationships as those in the Chesapeake.
4°Chaiyaa traded between Sumatra, Java, and Malaysia in the 8th to 13th centuries and was the main point of connection between India and Southeast Asia. On Thai names, the word 'Nong' means younger sister and is used before Thai formal names or nicknames, like Oo, for close friends who are younger than you are. 206
Driving into Phumriang, we stop to ask directions to Phae Wiya, a crabmeat mini plant that was one of the first suppliers for Phillips. One of the women setting up her food vending cart for the day market points directly behind us toward a gravel road that leads into a jungle of perfectly aligned rubber trees interrupted by shrimp ponds. Turning right at the only electricity pole in this managed jungle, we drive further down another gravel road beside a canal until the road becomes concrete slabs. This paved road ends at a steel gate and concrete walls surrounding the Phae Wiya factory complex-white concrete paving approximately the size of two basketball courts with three concrete buildings supporting corrugated tin roofs. The guard takes our identity cards and makes a call on the walkie talkie, then tells us to drive a few yards over to the farthest building.
Oo parks the car between a Champaign-colored Toyota sedan and the Muslim prayer room, which is separate from the main building. We get out in the bright, blazing hot sun made all the more blinding by the white concrete grounds, and walk to the carved wooden door leading into the office. At the door, we leave our sandals outside with about fifteen other pairs, then pull on the silver wrought door handle. Like our experiences with other factories, a blast of frosty air conditioning hits us in the face along with the ubiquitous yellow plastic strips that hang from every door in Thai seafood factories-the easiest way to keep out maengdaa and other flying bugs.
Inside, the office is dark and crowded with desks, computers, and people, but we are ushered through to a back office with several enormous, elaborately carved wooden desks. The owner, Khun Suwanii, enters followed by her husband Suriyaa and another, younger woman, Khun Kan-all three are wearing bright orange polo shirts embroidered 207
with a purple logo from Handy Seafood, a Chesapeake crabmeat company.41 As we are introduced, I learn that Khun Kan is the quality control person hired by Handy, but she used to work for Phillips as a HACCP team leader and accountant-I have come to realize that everyone in the crabmeat business in Thailand is somehow connected to
Phillips.
Suwanii explains that "Before crabmeat was a valuable export, I was a maekhaa here in Phumriang; all the other crabmeat suppliers in Thailand were maekhaa first."42
At the village level, the Thai seafood industry is run by women, the daughters and wives of fishermen known as maekhaa, which in Thai means market woman or vendor.43
Maekhaa buy fish and other seafood from small-scale, local fishermen and do minimal processing like cleaning and drying the fish or picking the crabmeat; work that is usually done in their home. Maekhaa primarily sell their seafood in local or nearby markets (See
Figure 16).44 However, because their supply is often more than what can be sold locally,
maekhaa maintain social networks with other maekhaa in Bangkok for access to the city's bigger markets where they get a higher price for their seafood.
41 The word Khun is used in Thai as a form ofrespect and one of the many ways to signal your relationship to the other person in the Thai language.
42 Suwanii Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 23 March 2006, Phumriang, Thailand.
43 Male vendors (phawkhaa) exist in Thailand but local and regional market trade of all goods has a much longer history with women in Thailand.
44 Fraser describes this same gendered market structure in his work in the 1960s among southern Muslim fishing villages in Thailand. See Thomas Fraser, Fishermen ofSouth Thailand: the Malay Villagers (New York: Rinehart and Winston Co., 1966). 208
But maekhaa also supply larger seafood processors and dealers called phae, which are also owned by women but do additional processing.45 These larger dealers use their networks with maekhaa throughout Thailand to increase their fleets, or the number of "fishermen in their hand," and thus the volume of seafood that they process, but they also buy fish directly from small trawlers. Phae sell their seafood either to local or regional merchant companies owned by Sino-Thai who sell the seafood across the border into Malaysia, or phae sell to foreign or Thai transnational corporations who do further processing before exporting the product.
Figure 16. Above, left: Maekhaa selling fresh picked blue swimming crabmeat in the Surat Thani fish market. Right: whole blue swimming crabs for sale in the Surat Thani fish market. Source: Photos by the author.
Maekhaa become phae by capitalizing their operations and purchasing larger pieces of property, preferably waterfront property, where they build larger processing facilities to attract more fishermen (particularly small trawlers) and build on their existing
45 There is not a good translation for the word phae which literally means houseboat or floating pier but when used in this context acquires the meaning of pier-based market. 209
connections with other maekhaa. In addition, larger phae loan money to fishing families and villages for weddings or illness. Women who own dockside phae also charge
fishermen to dock their boats and offload their catch, and they provide loans to fishermen for fuel, bait, or repairs. Phae without dockside facilities must pay a dockside phae to allow their boats to dock and unload, so for example a phae with twenty shrimp boats must pay 100 baht per boat per day to unload their catch, totaling 60,000 baht per month.46 As a result, towns like Don Sak have phae abutting each other along the river that empties into the Gulf of Thailand (See Figure 17).
Figure 17. Above, left: Looking west down the row ofphae from Phae Niti in Don Sak, Thailand. Right: Looking east toward the Gulf of Thailand down the row of phae from Phae Niti; notice the traditional long-tail fishing boats docked at the phae in the foreground. Source: Photos by the author.
Prior to Phillips' arrival, Suwanii bought mostly fish from a network of small-
scale fishermen all along Thailand's southern Gulf coast, processing and selling the fish from the bottom floor of her house. Small-scale fishermen in Thailand primarily use nets to fish, and these nets also caught puumaa (blue swimming crabs) as a by-catch, but few phae bought these crabs. Like other maekhaa, Suwanii did not have the space to process
46 At the time of my fieldwork, 60,000 baht equaled $1,500.00 US dollars. 210
crabs, and, instead, she boiled the crabs and then paid the fishermen's wives to pick the crabs in their homes. The village women packed the crabmeat into plastic bags and packed it on ice, and Suwanii would pick it up, and then sell the crabmeat in the local market or to other maekhaa in the high-end Yawalaat market in Bangkok. But as she explains:
The fishermen caught so many we always had a surplus, I was buying eight hundred kilos a day and we couldn't sell all the meat in the market. I heard that Songkhla Canning was using puumaa crabmeat for cat food and for sterilized canned crabmeat, like canned tuna fish, so I contacted them on my own to see if they wanted to buy my crabmeat.47
Songkhla Canning and other Thai companies co-packed, or processed seafood under contract, for US and European companies who exported the crabmeat as sterilized canned crabmeat for human consumption or as canned cat food. However, many phae owners recalled that puumaa did not command a high price from Thai seafood canneries and export statistics show that this was a small, lower value canned seafood than Thailand's high value, non-traditional seafood commodities of the time-frozen shrimp and canned tuna (See Table 10).48 The sterilized canned crabmeat was not graded for lump or backfin like crabmeat in the United States, and maekhaa and phae did not have to meet any HACCP regulations. According to Lloyd, "Those companies bought really marginal stuff [crabmeat] and just sterilized it to make it shelf-stable-that was quality control,
47 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. Songkhla Canning is a subsidiary of Thai Union Frozen Foods, a product of the merger and consolidation period in the 1990s. Thai Union is the world's largest canned tuna packer and owns Bumble Bee Brand.
48 Clinic Marketing Co., Report from the Study on the Canned Seafood Industry in Thailand. 211
some chemicals."49 However, the volume of crabmeat, both supplied from the fishermen and that required by the cannery, meant Suwanii had to become a phae. As Phae Wiya,
Suwanii soon had Muslim and Buddist maekhaa stretching down the Gulf coast to
Songkhla supplying her with crabmeat in addition to local fishermen in Phumriang.
Table 10. Canned Crabmeat Exports, Thailand, 1986-1990
Source: Data from Clinic Marketing Co. Report.from the Study on the Canned Seafood Industry in Thailand. Bangkok: Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Board of Investment, 1991.
In a few hours, Suwanii and her husband have explained the existing network of relationships and the value ofpuumaa before the industry changed (See Figure 18).
Since it is now noon, they suggest we go to lunch and drive by their old phae and house, which they have rented out to a new maekhaa. So we leave the air conditioned office for their air conditioned Toyota sedan and drive to the center of the town. As we drive up, I see a traditional wooden Thai house built on stilts with the living quarters upstairs and the ground floor opened onto the street. This bottom floor is a seafood processing room and several women are hosing down the tile and concrete floors and walls. Suwanii says they
49 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 3 January 2007, Berlin, MD. 212
have just finished for the day. I notice the familiar orange and blue plastic freezer chests stacked on the sidewalk loaded with seafood waiting to go to market or be picked up by a buyer. Suriyaa excitedly points to the opposite side of the street and exclaims proudly,
"And this is our new house!" Turning my head, I see a brand new three story glass, marble, tile, and steel home with a chrome fence and gate displaying the Phae Wiya logo--a large crab inside a circle. The new house sits between two smaller, but equally modem houses and Suwanii tells me that "this house and our new phae are possible because we learned about quality. We can say that Phillips is the teacher of pasteurized crabmeat in Thailand, and they taught us about quality and how to add value. They are the borisatmae"-the mother company.50
Figure 18. Thai Crabmeat Networks prior to Phillips' arrival in 1995.
The Borisatmae Buys the Village
In their press releases and other media dating back to the early 1990s, Phillips has maintained that they opened their own factories in Thailand (and other countries) to
50 Suwanii and other phae owners said Phillips was the mother company that taught quality "borisatmae pen khruu, khao son khunaphaap." Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded. 213
better control quality. 51 However, my oral histories show that the company was initially more focused on producing high volumes of cheap crabmeat. For example, Suwanii described her experience:
When Phillips first came, they bought crabmeat without concern for quality; just bought crabmeat directly from the fishing villages through me. They did that about two years, then Phillips had to change the production process; then Phillips reqmre. d qual' 1ty. s2
To obtain crabmeat, Phillips relied on a strategy that Dr. Nick called, "buying the whole village"-buying crabmeat through the existing network of relationships between maekhaa and phae to capture the natural resource through fishermen and women's labor starting at the village level.53 As the first company producing pasteurized crabmeat in
Thailand, Phillps enjoyed a leading edge--a quasi-monopoly on the resource and low costs-which gave the firm what Lloyd called "the needed window of opportunity" to accumulate profit before competition increased and their advantage dwindled.54 Buying the whole village, however, meant Phillips purchased crabmeat from women picking in their homes, which did not fully embrace HACCP's principles ofrisk assessment and traceability. To understand how Phillips, Pakfoods, and Byrd eventually shaped the
HACCP standards for Thailand and controlled the social and environmental relationships,
51 At the 2007 Seafood Summit at the Boston Seafood Show, CEO Mark Sneed reiterated this corporate narrative, even though Phillips no longer owns factories in Thailand where they have switched to a co-pack operation.
52 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
53 Chamnaanwet, Managing Director, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
54 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. This concept is also discussed in Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, "Contingent Commodities: Mobilizing Labor in and Beyond Southeast Asian Forests," in Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, Nature, and People in the Neoliberal Age, ed. Joseph Nevins and Nancy Lee Peluso (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). 214
we first need to understand how these three competitors inserted themselves into the existing networks to "buy the whole village."
Phillips
Phillips adopted several strategies to lure suppliers away from the sterilized canned crabmeat industry. Suwanii and other phae owners recalled that initially, the company offered a higher price for the crabmeat to the phae. But eventually they broke the existing pattern of sourcing only from phae and began to buy directly from maekhaa offering them a higher price than what Phae Wiya and others offered, but still lower than what Phillips paid the phae. For Suwanii, this strategy for capturing the resource created problems on several levels:
This created some conflict because they [Phillips] advanced money and gave a very high price for the crabmeat. I could not afford to pay that price, so I lost a lot of my smaller suppliers [maekhaa] to Phillips. 55
In these situations, the company gave money to villages for ceremonies, events, and other activities determined by the village, in addition to buying the crabmeat. This fmancial support mirrored the role ofphae and fostered the image among maekhaa of Phillips as a family business in contrast to Thai seafood corporations, "Phillips's operating style was like a family business, they helped and subsidized us sometimes, and they supported the fishermen financially when compared with the other [Thai] companies."56 In buying directly from maekhaa, Phillips disrupted the existing relationships in the seafood networks, transforming some maekhaa into phae in a very short time. This created
55 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
56 Somsak Choeklin, Husband of owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 19 July 2006 Don Sak, Thailand. 215
competition among the suppliers to harvest more crabs, but put these new phae at risk as many specialized only in crab and did not have the extensive network of relationships of the older phae, such as Suwanii of Phae Wiya.
Phae and maekhaa only did the initial processing and the picked crabmeat had to be transported to the company's main factory in Songkhla. To transport the crabmeat, phae did as they had for sterilized crabmeat-driving to Songkhla carrying picked crabmeat packed in plastic bags and stacked in industrial insulated food containers full of ice. However, Lloyd revealed that maekhaa sold their crabmeat to a purchasing agent, or buyer, that worked for Phillips and came with hidden costs:
If you own your own factory, you're going out to these villages and you're trying to get the best quality raw material for the cheapest price. And you surely have to have local buyers, Thais, to get out and do all this buying and they become rich by Thai standards because they go to the crab supplier, and say, 'Ok, the price I should pay you is this many baht, but I'm going to pay you ten extra baht, that's five baht for you and five baht for me'-happens all the time. I didn't even try to stop it, you couldn't. 57
Phae and other Thai participants in the network considered this practice corruption on the part of Phillips, but like Lloyd, US executives framed it as part of doing business in
Southeast Asia. But this system and new configuration of networks met Phillips goals of high volume supplies of crabmeat at cheap prices in order to meet the breakeven point for costs associated with exporting the product. Lloyd explained the reasoning, "You' re not trying to make any money on the Asia side, you are basically trying to recoup your
57 Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. All of the phae described this same problem as did Khun Kan who was a financial manager for Phillips at the time. 216
expenses over there because your profit is made here [in the United States], so you're looking to just break even on that side" and to do it you need raw material volume. 58
Once the crabmeat reached the factory, it was reprocessed to remove shells and sorted into grades, as the phae did not sort the meat according to US grades of lump, backfin, special and claw. The crabmeat was then packed in one pound cans, pasteurized, and kept in cold storage until the company produced enough to fill a shipping container. 59
Then the crabmeat was exported on container ships out of Songkhla through Singapore where they were pre-inspected by US Customs before shipment to the United States. 60
When Phillips started in Thailand, the company adhered to the USFDA HACCP model for crabmeat, which meant they only focused on processes that took place inside their Songkhla factory. 61 As a result, early quality control focused on time and temperature sequences for pasteurization and temperature limits for cold storage, but it did not extend the hazard analysis back to the point of harvest or the initial processing taking place in the uncontrolled environments of women's homes. Furthermore, the emphasis on high volume created production problems inside the main reprocessing factory. Khun Kan, who worked for Phillips at the time, said the company increased its volume beyond the capacity of the workers to monitor for quality:
58 Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
59 Shipping containers come in a variety of sizes, but the ones I saw used in Thailand were nine feet high, eight feet wide, and twenty feet long.
60 Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded.
61 Based on Kanjana Maniwan, Former HACCP Compliance Director, Phillips Foods Thailand, and Handy International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded, 7 June 2006, Hat Yai, Thailand. 217
Normally, we had two hundred workers who can do only 3000 or 4000 kilos of crabmeat a day [8,800 pounds]. But during the high season, when there were a lot of crabs, we started doing 5000, 6000, 7000 until we reached 10,000 kilos a day [22,000 pounds]. That is why we had so many rejections for flies, shells, and bad smells.62
To complicate the problem, once the crabmeat entered the factory, workers in the receiving area mixed all of the crabmeat from different suppliers together so that a finished can contained crabmeat from several different maekhaa or phae. This erased the traceability of the product and made Phillips solely accountable for the problems.63
Although these practices violated HACCP principles they adhered to USFDA regulations, but in 1996 Phillips had several containers of crabmeat rejected in the United
States by the FDA and customers because of insect contamination (filth under FDA codes) and microbiological and organoleptic problems.64 The phae recalled that Phillips slowed down production at this time, but now they were not the only pasteurized crabmeat company looking for suppliers.
Pakfoods
Part of the legacy of the borisatmae is that they created their own competition through former employees. While working for Phillips, Lloyd spread the knowledge and technology of how to produce pasteurized crabmeat throughout the Philippines,
Indonesia, and Thailand. "Oh sure, I trained them," he admitted:
62 Khun Kan originally started with Phillips as a an accountant, moving into production management and finally quality control, Ibid.
63 This practice also created inaccurate financial records for payments to suppliers who complained that their records regarding the net weight of crabmeat shipped to Phillips did not match their payments by the company. Ibid.
64 Ibid. 218
And these big Thai seafood companies have massive plants and they are always looking for a new product that will make money. So what happens is that you get over there and people you trust who are Thais learn the business from you stem to stem and the next thing you know, some great big company says 'Hey come work for me, I'll pay you this much more' and you'll start losing key personnel to other companies because they get more money. And that's how the technology spreads.65
Pakfoods learned how to pasteurize crabmeat and meet the culturally defined quality demands of US consumers when Lloyd Byrd left Phillips to start his own crabmeat company, Byrd International. Initially, Lloyd did not want to have his own factory,
"Having gone through this with Phillips, I really didn't want to own anything in Asia."66
Instead, Lloyd approached the president of Pakfoods, who had initially helped Phillips with their first feasibility study in Thailand, to start a co-pack operation. Pakfoods rented
Lloyd a section of their Mahachai shrimp factory near Bangkok to produce pasteurized crabmeat. But, according to Lloyd, this relationship proved challenging:
My son and I started redesigning this part of the plant and we trained everybody, got it up and going, and for about two years were very successful doing this co pack in their factory. But then guess what? They had this big shrimp customer in the US who wanted crabmeat and even though I had an exclusive contract with them [Pakfoods], they decided they would sell this shrimp customer my crabmeat. I had set the whole thing up and paid for most of the equipment, the cell phones for the people to use in the field because you have to stay in touch, I had bought trucks because the buyers had to get around and Pakfoods didn't want to spend the money. So within two years they just took that right out from under me. 67
Pakfoods eventually expanded their pasteurized crabmeat production, transforming the facility in Mahachai into frozen crab cake production. A former shrimp factory in the
65 Byrd, Fonner Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired 0"'1ler Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
66 Ibid. Lloyd financed his company through his 0"'11 earnings from Phillips and a friend, a real estate agent in Ocean City, Maryland.
67 Ibid. 219
coastal city of Phakphanang became the center of co-pack operations where Pakfoods processed and pasteurized crabmeat for US brands, but also developed their own brand for sale to restaurants like Red Lobster.68
As a Thai company, Pakfoods had stronger relationships with suppliers developed over decades of sourcing seafood in southern Thailand. Pakfoods' seafood buyers often acted as advisors to fishermen on village matters from weddings to fishing technology, and provided phae with advice on managing fishermen, prices, and technical problems.
In some cases, Pakfoods made loans to the fishermen and phae that financially bound them to the corporation, but according to the phae had not been as generous as Phillips.
However, Lloyd admitted that the Thai transnational was able to leverage these relationships to undercut the US companies:
Let's say that you're a supplier in the village, and I talk you into selling me crabmeat, and I'm paying you a lot of money, and you like me, and I like you we trust each other. Well, all these big Thai companies got buyers going into these little villages too. They're buying squid and cuttlefish and a variety of things. They see you buying all this crabmeat and those buyers from the big companies will say, "I want some of this crabmeat." Well, that Thai company's doing a lot of business with you-shrimp, squid-and you got to pay attention to him even though you have a contract with me. 69
Pakfoods used its existing relationships with village women to buy the whole village too, but this meant they had a similar production structure as Phillips and faced the same quality problems. Lloyd eventually established his own factory, Royal Sea Products, in the border city of Hat Yai adjacent to Songkhla. But the company had to adopt a
68 Alice Oui, Vice-President of Marketing, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly F eltault, 17 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
69 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 220
different strategy to capture the natural resource which was monopolized by Phillips and
Pakfoods.
Byrd: Royal Sea Products
Norman Whittington, who had managed McDonalds' McCrab Cake sandwich project, joined Byrd International in the mid 1990s.70 Norman worked with the Thai manager of Royal Sea, Khun Joop, to develop new access points to the puumaa resource.
Khun Joop knew that access to crabs meant access to fishermen:
We set up Royal Sea during the time of high competition for the crab, so it was very hard to find the raw material for the factory because each province maybe had three or four big suppliers, but they already had a factory. 71
Joop developed two strategies for obtaining crabmeat that took advantage of the weaknesses of Phillips and Pakfoods.
First, he studied each of the large suppliers to understand where Phillips and
Pakfoods were not supporting them. "I studied the condition of each of the big suppliers in each province to see what was the gap between that supplier and their factories, and what was our advantage, our strong point, and the other factory's weak point," he explained. 72 The weak point of the other factories turned out to be how they handled quality problems:
The weak point of the other factories was that if a supplier had some problem they would say it is their [the supplier's] problem to fix, but we cannot say that the
70 Norman Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 28 October 2005, Berlin, MD.
71 Nuttha Maneerat, Manager, Royal Sea Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 22 February 2006, Hat Yai, Thailand.
72 Ibid. 221
problem is only theirs. Instead, the factory should send somebody to work with the suppliers, and help them to solve any problem. 73
Joop gave maekhaa customer service and made them partners in the success of Royal Sea through the quality and safety of their products. For example:
If the crabmeat has a quality issue coming from the supplier, we have to go directly and explain to them. You can't just call them on the hand phone [cell phone], you have to take a sample and let them see what has happened and help them to analyze what is the cause of this problem. Maybe the problem happened during the transportation time period or maybe happened during the catching or maybe they have a problem at the cooking station or something like that. We also show them the receiving area so they will understand our quality control better, but other factories don't allow suppliers inside. We have to help them to solve the problem. And that's how I approached the suppliers to supply us with the raw material-we gave them technical support. 74
This approach led a few women to start supplying Royal Sea, but Joop did not rely on this strategy alone.
He combined technical assistance with his second approach: creating new maekhaa. Khun Joop contacted villages that were not already connected to maekhaa and phae supplying factories and created buying and steaming stations:
My second plan was to contact small groups of fishermen that cannot supply directly to the factory. Many small supplier [maekhaa] and fishing villages without maekhaa have to pass through the big supplier to the factory so I approached these villages to see what they would need to directly supply to Royal Sea and we developed the steaming stations in the villages, but we provide technical support here too because it may not be only a concern about the crab, maybe the fishermen have some problem about the gear. And sometimes fishermenjust really want you to sit and talk with them. 75
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid. 222
Rather than have the village women pick the crabs, as Phillips and Pakfoods did, Royal
Sea provided small loans to a family in different villages who became a steaming station where the crabs would be steamed and cooled (See Figure 19). 76 These beach-side steaming stations were frequently located in coastal slum villages, as well as long-time established Muslim fishing villages throughout southern Thailand. But Royal Sea was highly selective in their loans:
We would only work with the best and the best means that maybe you have a very small volume of crabs but they are good and you are a good person-we can talk and understand each other and get along well. I would study their habit too, know their background, which you can get from their neighborhood. If they seem like a good person we would start doing business. 77
In this way, Joop based the company's networks on personal relationships and an individual's character. He then monitored the quality and supply of the new maekhaa for several months. Those with quality problems in less than ten percent of their crabmeat after the trial period became regular suppliers. Royal Sea developed stronger forms of trust with its suppliers because they shared information on the norms and practices expected. These new maekhaa viewed this information sharing as empowerment, which created a strong sense of loyalty between these women, the villages, and Royal Sea. As steaming station owner BaaToy described, "Royal Sea helped me grow my business, I really trust them and I want to supply only them. When they slow down production and I have to sell to someone else, I feel like I'm being disloyal to them."78
76 Ibid.
77 Ibid.
78 BaaToy, Owner, BaaToy steaming station. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 23 February 2006, Songkhla, Thailand. 223
Figure 19. Above,left: landing crabs at a Royal Sea steaming station in Songkhla, the female owner, BaaToy, stands on the far right. Right: removing the steamed crabs from the cooker at BaaToy's steaming station. Source: Photos by the author.
Once steamed and cooled, the crabs were then shipped whole to a mini plant owned by Royal Sea outside of Songkhla. As Lloyd had done before, they supplied cell phones to fishermen and the new maekhaa so the company could track and coordinate the volume of crab landings across the peninsula, "The fishermen call in to tell us how much crab they have and how much they are cooking so we can coordinate this across several provinces to guarantee enough volume in production at any one time."79 In the mini plant, the crabmeat was picked and graded, and packed in Tupperware containers then shipped to the main factory in Hat Y ai. 80 At the Royal Sea factory, the crabmeat was reprocessed to remove shell fragments, and then canned, pasteurized and packed in cartons for shipment to the United States through Singapore. Under Joop's plan, Royal
Sea did not buy strictly on volume. Instead, they bought crabs based on the relationships that Joop and his team of procurement officers (all former fishermen) established and the
79 Maneerat, Manager, Royal Sea Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
80 Descriptions of steps in the network from Ibid. 224
technical support the company provided regarding quality and handling of the raw material.
All three companies competed for the same natural resource and captured fishermen and women's labor through different strategies for building trust and relationships with maekhaa and phae. This process of getting closer to the natural resource restructured the existing networks (See Figure 20). Phillips and Byrd created new networks by offering more money for the resource and community assistance, or offering technical assistance and loans. This additional capital expense created a platform from which Pakfoods benefitted, as the Thai company used its long-time relationships with coastal communities and suppliers to undercut the US companies, especially Phillips. However, creating new suppliers revalued the resource raising the costs, while all the companies faced quality control problems because their HACCP plans did not include the suppliers. As we shall see, making crabmeat auditable required a combination of standardized and localized knowledge regarding the biophysical properties of the crab, specific hazards and production environments, and cultural understandings of quality to make Maryland crab cakes. Once solidified, these HACCP practices created a hierarchy of quality reinforced by the ability to reject crabmeat at any point in the production process. In effect, rejection became a form of social and environmental control with significant impacts for fishermen and suppliers. 225
Figure 20. The crabmeat supply chain after 1997. Above, top: The networks after Phillips entered and began competing with Pakfoods for the resource; Middle: The new network created by transforming existing maekhaa into phae; Bottom: The network created by Byrd that established new maekhaa through steaming stations. practices created a hierarchy of quality reinforced by the ability to reject crabmeat at any 226
Thai HACCP: Controlling People and Nature
In terms ofHACCP, the companies had not made crabmeat auditable-they had not codified procedures or rules to create the forms of evidence collection, verification, and accountability that would monitor hazards starting at the point of harvest. As outlined in Chapter Two, controlling and monitoring hazards governs how actors in the network handle raw materials, production processes, time and temperature sequences, as well as personnel behavior and work methods that will prevent the hazards. 81 A key tool in this process is the traceability system (record keeping) that tracks the names of anyone who has handled the product starting with the fishermen through the mini plants and steaming stations, and into the main factory.
Instead, Phillips and the other companies had built their networks on the Thai domestic quality convention, and only extended their hazard analysis as far as the main factories, and even there, had mixed crabmeat from different suppliers into the same cans.
In this way, the companies effected little control over people's behavior and the biophysical processes of blue swimming crabs. As a result, the Thai Department of
Fisheries (DOF), the three companies, and the Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist,
Tom Rippen, came together to develop a more comprehensive HACCP system in which the critical control points (CCPs) and traceability started with the fishermen and carried through the main factories and allowed companies to reject crabmeat at any point in the process. Once companies and the state developed these systems, they became codified in
Thai HACCP and export regulations.
81 E.S. Garrett, M. Hudak-Roos, and D.R. Ward, "Implementation of the HACCP Program by the Fresh and Processed Seafood Industry," in HACCP in Meat, Poultry and Fish Processing: Advances in Meat Research Series ed. AM. Pearson and T.R. Dutson (London: Blackie Academic Professional, 1996); Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 227
Critical Control Points in the Village
Across the bay from Phae Wiya is Phae Niti in the town of Don Sak. The main road into Don Sak leads to the coast and a street lined with phae on the shoreline and maekhaa across the street. Although the buildings seem to crowd each other out, Phae
Niti is easy to spot-they have the newest buildings on the street enclosed by a shiny fence and gate displaying their logo: a crab flanked by two shrimp. Before the borisatmae arrived, Phae Niti had been a maekhaa and supplied Phae Wiya with crabmeat. 82 For the last few years they have primarily supplied Pakfoods who has bought their shrimp for over two decades. 83
The procurement officer for Pakfoods, PhiiBae, likes to visit the phae on a regular basis, and today we are here to visit all of the company's suppliers in Don Sak.84 As we drive inside Phae Niti's gates, the main offices are in the concrete building on the right and there is a small garden and a building holding supplies on the left. Everything is painted seafoam blue except the sign with the Phillips logo on the wall of their mini plant. The concrete loading area between the buildings ends at the dock where ten or twelve men are sorting and weighing piles of shrimp into plastic laundry baskets. The owner of Phae Niti, Khun Nantani or PhiiNii, comes out to greet us and tells some of the men to make sure the crab steamer is getting hot. She and PhiiBae are eager to show me how quality is managed, so I am going to follow a batch of crabs from the Phae Niti dock
82 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
83 Pakfoods HACCP Manager and Crabmeat Buyer, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 6 March 2006, Phakpanang, Thailand.
84 On Thai names, the world "Phii" is used before formal Thai names and nicknames, like PhiiBae or PhiiNii, for friends and colleagues who are older than you are or warrant a higher level of respect. 228
to the Pakfoods factory. They expect a boat of crabs any minute, so we enter the supply building and put on white rubber boots and lab coats, and grab some surgical masks.
PhiiNii is very proud of her product and the quality she has achieved. Like
Suwanii across the bay, she attributes her knowledge about quality to Phillips, especially technology and picking crabs according to sanitation codes-using chlorine bleach, rubber boots, and surgical masks. 85 She is quick to point out that she has combined this
"theory and academic knowledge" with her own knowledge about the nature of crabs gained from everyday experience and some experiments. PhiiNii considers her quality level a type of standardized brand because other companies can easily accept it, "When
PhiiBae first came here to buy for Pakfoods he could accept the quality level and buy the crabmeat. I didn't have to change anything, we had standards."86 This is what Dr. Nick meant by standardizing the crab and the industry.
A small trawler pulls up to the dock with a two man crew and four barrels full of bubbling water and crabs. The men on the dock dash to get a ten foot long rack of nested plastic laundry baskets and stretch the rack from the dock out to the boat deck where one of the crew members begins to unload the baskets. This is the first critical control point or CCP-harvesting. The companies and the seafood specialists from Thailand and
Maryland agreed that purchasing the best quality raw material would eliminate many of their quality concerns. Tom Rippen, Maryland's Seafood Technologist, described why:
Crabmeat processing in Southeast Asia is structured differently than here in the US. Over there it is a hub and spoke system, or they call it a mini plant system,
85 Nantani Choeklin, Owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 7 March 2006, Don Sak, Thailand.
86 Ibid. 229
and the great distance and time period between harvesting, steaming, and picking the crabs creates a lot of quality problems because of the enzymatic degradation in crabs-we had to find a way to deactivate the enzymes. 87
The key problem had been that most of the suppliers bought crabs whether they were alive or dead, but enzymatic reactions in the dead crabs had begun to decompose the meat. 88 The control method was to purchase only live crabs and immediately steam them, making the first control point the dock or beach where fishermen land crabs.
Companies and fishermen needed a way to decrease the mortality rate and insure more crabs were kept alive until they were purchased by the maekhaa or phae. However, this meant creating systems for both small scale fishermen and the smaller trawlers that had entered the fishery. According to PhiiNii:
Fishermen had to change their habit of fishing crab because if the fishermen had a dead crab they got lower price. So fishermen figured out how to control quality using the oxygen tubs on the boats and the rubber band around the crab so that crabs can't kill each other in the tubs. 89
Fishermen and phae worked together to develop a system of fifty-gallon plastic drums filled with oxygenated water. Fishermen carry the drums on their boats and place harvested crabs in the tank to keep them alive. Upon arrival at the phae, crabs are scooped out of the tanks and put into the plastic laundry baskets, then transferred to workers on the dock (See Figure 21 ). This system only worked for small scale trawlers who had begun to specialize in crabbing, but small scale fishermen continued to use nets
87 As the Seafood Technology Specialist for Maryland Tom Rippen has helped Maryland importers, such as Phillips and Byrd, with their quality and HACCP problems overseas. Tom Rippen, Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, telephone interview, 26 May 2005.
88 Ibid.
89 Like their Chesapeake cousins, blue swimming crabs are cannibals. Choeklin, Owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly F eltault. 230
Figure 21. The first CCP is live crabs. Above, top: fishing boats arrive with crabs in oxygenated tanks and plastic laundry baskets are put on board, note the stack of crab traps on the far right. Lower left: unloading crabs out of the oxygenated plastic holding tank into the laundry basket. Lower right: close-up of crabs in the oxygenated barrel. Source: Photos by the author. in order to catch other species. They could not afford the risk of becoming specialized crab fishermen and needed to harvest a variety of species for sale in the local market, as well as to export companies. However, crabs caught in nets tended to die before reaching the shore and the supplier. Since Byrd worked most directly with small scale fishermen,
Joop developed a different method to keep crabs alive in nets, "We worked with local fishermen to build on their knowledge and create a solution they could use. Netted crabs 231
are kept alive with wet cloths draped over the nets or by dragging the nets in the water until they land at shore."90
Once on the dock, the second CCP began-sorting the crabs for live and dead, as well as size. This was the first rejection point and the first place where crabs were segmented into export quality and local market quality. When suppliers reject dead crabs during the sorting process, they are sent to maekhaa to pick for sale on the local market.
Rejecting the crabs or crabmeat at specific points in the network was the most significant method for monitoring and controlling people's behavior. Rejection was enforced by a more thorough record keeping system that started with the sorting of the crabs and carried through to the main reprocessing factory. This traceability system tracked which suppliers-and even which workers-consistently produced rejected crabmeat.
Rejection meant suppliers and fishermen did not get paid, but they were also labeled as
"low quality" and thus untrustworthy.
However, this CCP incorporated a corporate definition of quality and profitability as all of the suppliers used this step to sort crabs according to size (See Figure 22). Size is a quality standard not a safety issue, but suppliers made sorting for size part ofHACCP because the US companies only wanted the largest pieces of crabmeat, which meant the largest crabs. Suppliers were instructed to buy only the two largest sizes of crabs and reject others during the sorting process. Several US corporate executives viewed this step as a conservation measure, but all of the maekhaa and phae that I studied frequently bought all the crabs from fishermen, regardless of size. Larger, living crabs became
90 Maneerat, Manager, Royal Sea Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 232
export quality, while all others became secondary quality for either the national market or sterilized canned crabmeat.
Figure 22. The second CCP is sorting. Top, left and right: BaaToy sorting crabs for size at her steaming station built by Byrd International. Below: Workers at Phae Niti sorting crabs for size with the Procurement Officer from Pakfoods (far right). Source: Photos by the author.
This definition of quality combined biophysical aspects of the Portunus crabs and a key element of restaurant quality crab cakes-the lump meat-and the most profitable grade for packers. Purchasing only the largest crabs provided companies with two new grades of lump meat-super and colossal jumbo lump--and new avenues for profit back in the United States (See Figure 23). Colossal jumbo lump only has thirty to forty pieces per one-pound can, compared to Chesapeake jumbo lump which has up to one hundred 233
pieces.91 These additional grades meant a further differentiation in quality that reverberated throughout the network, resulting in higher prices for these cuts in the U.S. and the devaluation of domestic jumbo lump, while revaluing the dockside price for larger crabs in Thailand.
Figure 23. Colossal jumbo lump. Notice the pieces of crabmeat are larger than the Quality Control Supervisor's thumbs in the upper comers of the photo. Source: Photo by the author.
The third CCP controls for hazards in the steaming and initial processing steps completed at the village level. As part of the "kill step" to end the enzymatic degradation and purchase only high quality raw materials, companies required that crabs be steamed immediately after the sorting process. To monitor these first three steps, suppliers had to keep a time chart for when the crabs were landed, steamed, picked, and shipped to the main factory. As we watch the men sort the crabs and move them to the steaming area,
91 This is printed on the cans, but it is also part of Thai state standards, see Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft of the National Food and Agricwtural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab, (Bangkok: National Food and Agricultural Product Standards Office, Agricultural Commodities and Food Standards Office, 2004). 234
PhiiNii says, "I have to be careful about the time now, I can't leave the crab too long on the dock or it will die, and even during steaming and cold storage, I have to watch the time and record everything. "92 Most of the phae steam the crabs in locally built steamers fueled by rubber tree wood, aging trees cut by the plantations that blanket southern
Thailand (See Figure 24). After the crabs are steamed, they are put into cold storage until the next morning when they are picked.
Figure 24. The third CCP is cooking. Above: Steamer and boiler at Phae Niti. Source: Photos by the author.
The greatest change to Phillips and Pakfoods' networks occurred at the initial picking stage because the US companies and seafood technologists decided that women could no longer pick in their homes.93 Instead, the initial crab picking had to take place inside a controlled environment, like a factory. Rather than move the initial picking operations to the main factories, Phillips began creating mini plants at the phae. Suwanii recalled what this meant:
92 Choeklin, Owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly F eltault.
93 Rippen, Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, telephone interview. 235
They built the mini plants at the phae and maekhaa and we started steaming and picking the crabs, they had to build the mini plants and move women into the factory to control quality. Phillips made so much money before [we were] picking in the plant by buying the raw material directly from the villager.94
Building factories meant paying fishermen's wives and daughters (or illegal Burmese labor) wages which increased the costs of the raw material. Just as Byrd had made small loans to villages to create maekhaa, Phillips expanded the capacity of the phae through loans to build mini plants at the phae-small cinderblock factories that resembled crab factories in the Chesapeake.95 These loan systems operated as a credit against the supplier's harvests, so that suppliers paid back the loans by selling their crabmeat exclusively to Phillips, who deducted a small percentage of the purchase price from the loan. Phillips built seventy-five mini plants in Southern Thailand and while the company considered these branches, the phae owners and Pakfoods did not.
Phillips stationed a quality control person from their reprocessing factory inside each of the mini plants to make sure phae adhered to HACCP and corporate standards, but these managers also tried to insure that phae sold only to Phillips.96 But Pakfoods and even Byrd approached phae offering higher prices without reductions for loans in order to capture the infrastructure, labor, and the natural resource. Conversely, maekhaa who had received loans from Byrd, often paid their loans quickly, putting them in better bargaining positions according to BaaToy:
Other companies would come and ask how much I owed Royal Sea and try and take over the loan, but I paid off my loan within three months, so when they found
94 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
95 Data on the loans from Maniwan, Former HACCP Compliance Director, Phillips Foods Thailand, and Handy International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
96 Ibid. 236
out I didn't owe Royal Sea anything and I am debt free, I am in a better position to negotiate with them.97
Many of the larger phae continued selling a small percent of their crabmeat to Pakfoods.
But moving women inside mini plants still required a traceability system that connected the mini plant to the main reprocessing factory.
When the crabs from the dock enter the steamer, PhiiNii takes me inside her mini plant where women are picking crabs that were landed and steamed yesterday. As we enter the mini plant, we put on our surgical masks and walk through a shallow pool of chlorine bleach. About ten women are picking crabs in the main room with another ten working in the back, but all of them wear light blue hats and surgical tops with the
Phillips logo embroidered on them. Even though they mostly supply Pakfoods, PhiiNii provides the women with the Phillips uniforms because, "I still have a lot and they are easier to clean, and make us look like a real factory."98 Watching the women pick the crabmeat, I notice them putting fluorescent, laminated name tags in each container of crabmeat. When crab pickers fill a container, they take it to the counter where the forelady weighs the meat, records it and begins filling out the paperwork that will accompany this crabmeat to the Pakfoods factory. The paperwork includes the time chart for picking the crabmeat, a code for the name of the worker, the date, and a code corresponding to the fishermen and date harvested. This is not a high tech system and all the phae used something very similar that allowed them to keep and produce records dating back to 1999 and 2000.
97 BaaToy, Owner, BaaToy steaming station. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
98 Choeklin, Owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly F eltault. 237
Figure 25. The fourth CCP is traceability. Above, left: the laminated name tags. Above, right: the forelady recording weights and codes. Above, bottom: grading and removing shell fragments before packing the crabmeat for transport to Pakfoods' main factory. Source: Photos by the author.
Once the meat is weighed, the women in the back room begin to sort the crabmeat for lump, special, backfin and claw and remove any shell fragments that they find, as they repack the crabmeat into smaller, plastic containers (See Figure 25). Even during this process, the meat is kept distinct by worker and batch of crabs. The crabmeat is then packed into industrial insulated food coolers with ice and loaded on the Pakfoods truck sitting outside. As we watch this process, PhiiNii philosophically states, "Crabmeat now is like a prostitute. So many people touch the crab from unloading, sorting, steaming, picking and then to the main factory where it is touched by more people. It is a difficult 238
process before you Americans can eat it. "99 PhiiBae and I get in his truck and drive to the Pakfoods factory.
Critical Control Points in Factories
The Pakfoods factory is located in the coastal city Phakpanang surrounded by
acres of shrimp farms. Inside the gates, the factory complex stands to the right and the
administrative offices and canteen behind the factory. To enter the crabmeat factory, I
must again put on white rubber boots, surgical mask, cloth shower cap, and a white lab
coat. Once inside, I walk through the now familiar sterilization station-a shallow
concrete pond filled with chlorine-and then wash my hands with antibacterial soap
before a woman brushes me with a lint brush. After signing in, I walk through the yellow
plastic strips into the main repacking room. The Production Manager and head of the
HACCP team, Khun Nattaphong or PhiiNat, escorts me to the receiving area where the
picked crabmeat arrives from the phae-this is the next CCP and a main point for
rejecting crabmeat.
To monitor the quality of the incoming crabmeat, the companies created control
standards in the receiving stations of the main reprocessing factories that were included
in their HACCP plans. These standards begin with time and temperature checks based on
the paperwork that arrives with the incoming crabmeat to measure the shipping time
listed by the supplier against the receiving time of the company. However, detecting low
quality crabmeat at the receiving station relies primarily on organoleptic testing-sensory
testing-which tests color, texture, smell, and taste.
99 Ibid. 239
As discussed in Chapter Two, organoleptic testing cannot detect microbiological hazards, but for crabmeat they are used as indicators-a bad smell indicates the potential for old, contaminated crabmeat and therefore the meat is rejected. However, organoleptic tests required that companies make the smell, texture, taste, and color of crabmeat standardized, measurable, and verifiable-in other words auditable. To make smell auditable, the quality technician at Pakfoods trained women to recognize different smells as levels of quality. The HACCP team member in charge described the process:
I train the smellers to find the right smell range, and we test the smell abilities of the smellers all the time through control smells. If they pick the wrong thing then their smell ability has changed and they must be moved to another job in the factory. But these smell ranges are stated in our HACCP plan, we list these people by name in our HACCP plan. 100
Women working as organoleptic testers inspect all of the crabmeat entering the main factory; therefore it is not uncommon for them to smell crabmeat for twelve or thirteen hour shifts (See Figure 26). These women look for specific types of smells, as well as the texture of the crabmeat. During the afternoons I spent with these testers, I learned that the following attributes indicate the meat is old and lead to instant rejection: ammonia smells, extremely fishy smells, dry meat that is not shiny, and meat that is stringy. If the organoleptic testers reject an individual plastic container, then the entire shipment of crabmeat undergoes random sampling for microbiological counts. Picked crabmeat that is rejected is sent back to the phae who sells it either on the local market or to the sterilized canning or the pet food industries.
100 Pakfoods Quality Control Technicians, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 6 June 2006, Phakpanang, Thailand. 240
Figure 26. The fifth CCP is organoleptic testing. Above: Smell testing a shipment of lump meat at Pakfoods. Source: Photo by the author.
Once the crabmeat passes the organoleptic testing area, it is sent to the main packing room. As stated earlier, initially Phillips had combined crabmeat from different phae into one can at this stage. The DOF and Tom Rippen acknowledged this as a major violation ofHACCP's traceability requirements, and today each can packed in the reprocessing factory must contain crabmeat from only one supplier. 101 The paperwork that originates at the phae stays with the crabmeat once it enters the main factory and allows Pakfoods and Maryland companies to identify the supplier. Thus, if a customer in the United States finds a problem, the can is rejected and traced back to the supplier.
This information is recorded in the supplier's files and they are not paid for that batch, resulting in reduced wages for mini plant workers and fisherman. 102 However, the crabmeat is traceable not only to the phae, but also within the reprocessing factory to the workers who packed, sealed, pasteurized, and shipped the product. HACCP team
101 Department of Fisheries, Food Technologist, Fish Inspection and Quality Control Division, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 12 June 2006, Songkhla, Thailand; Tom Rippen, Maryland Seafood Technology Specialist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 23 March 2007, Princess Anne, Maryland.
102 Pakfoods HACCP Manager and Crabmeat Buyer, Interview by Kelly Feltault. 241
members from each company praised this approach because they could now pin point which supplier and which workers had packed a rejected batch of crabmeat, allowing them to "control the workers better."
Figure 27. The sixth CCP is shell removal done in a black light room at Pakfoods. Source: Photo by the author.
But the reprocessing factory has several other CCPs that, like the sensory tests, insert corporate and culturally defined ideas of quality into HACCP's science.
Organoleptic testers paid particular attention to the color of lump meat rejecting any with brown discoloration. PhiiNat explained, "The companies really like the meat to be very white and glossy, there can't be any defects."103 The companies also include physical hazards, especially shell fragments, in their HACCP plans. Although most of the shell fragments are removed at mini plants, companies subject crabmeat to black-light rooms because the shell glows in the dark. In these rooms, women sit at long tables using tweezers to remove the last specks of shell fragments before canning and pasteurizing the crabmeat (See Figure 27).
103 Ibid. 242
When the companies initially started this traceability system, suppliers who did not meet the standards were put on a watch list and routinely received lab testing and additional inspections by the companies until their quality improved. After Thaksin's election in 2001, seafood and other food exports increased their significance in Thai EOI policies and the Thai DOF codified the corporate rules and relationships through a specific set of product standards for puumaa in 2004. 104 The standards outlined on- board practices for fishermen, including sanitation and handling of the crabs and in this way exceeded the USFDA requirements because that agency held no jurisdiction over vessels. The Thai national standards codified sizes for crabs and crabmeat, the color and texture of the meat, and the organoleptic procedures developed by the companies, merging US concepts of quality and safety into national sensory standards and all
HACCP plans. The standards also included tolerance levels for several pathogens, including e coli and salmonella, that adhere to more stringent European standards than the levels set in the United States.
However, the Director of the Thai Seafood Inspection office admitted that
HACCP has helped the industry with microbiological problems, but not chemical contaminants.105 Instead, her office uses the different tolerance levels for chemicals and pesticides between the United States, Europe, Canada and other countries to their advantage:
We can't change cadmium contamination-it's just nature. And HACCP has not helped with that. So we export that seafood to countries with regulations that
104 Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft ofthe National Food and Agricultural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab.
105 Department of Fisheries, Director, Quality Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault. 243
allow for higher tolerance levels, countries like the US. And if we get a container that is rejected, we reship it to another country where it will meet the standards.106
Under HACCP, countries can shop their seafood exports around until it meets given safety standards. In this way, the environment and our seafood remain adulterated-a natural and acceptable risk of our global food system as HACCP facilitates the availability of seafood in global trade.
Summary
This chapter has outlined how Phillips, Byrd, and Pakfoods transformed puumaa from catfood to a NTC through HACCP and how that became a significant aspect of Thai economic growth policy. The companies embedded the supply chains in existing class, religious, and kin relationships, but also used HACCP to reshape these relationships and control people's behavior and the environment. As they created new networks, they mixed the cultural notions of quality from the Chesapeake and HACCP's science-based risk assessments to create an industrial quality convention. The companies began crafting this convention just before the financial crisis in 1997 and fine tuned it in the years afterward until the state adopted a set of crabmeat codes in 2004 under Thaksin's new development polices. During this time, HACCP revalued the natural resource and the people who processed it. The next chapter explores this valuation and differentiation process.
106 Ibid. CHAPTER6
THAILAND: KITCHEN OF THE WORLD
The Sufficiency Economy is "balanced development" which takes into account the economy, society, politics, and environment, with the aim to make people in the society happy, self-reliant, and abreast with the world, while still preserving the Thai national identity.
NESDB, Ninth National Development Plan
In the wake of the 1997 financial crisis, the IMF attempted to restructure
Thailand's economy and weaken the Sino-Thai capitalist class by selling their family- owned multinational corporations to foreign firms. 1 In response, the Sino-Thai elite reconfigured politics in Thailand by placing one of their own-Thaksin-as Prime
Minister. Thaksin used liberal language of participation, empowerment, and sustainability to define a new social contract for the state's economic development policies that emphasized Thai (Buddhist) cultural values with personal responsibility and state institutions as constraints to globalization. However, the goal of the Thaksin government was to maintain the class position of the Sino-Thai elite while instilling economic competitiveness in citizen-consumers at the village level through Thai national identity and moralized notions of a national community.
1 My understanding of these events is based on Kevin Hewison, "Neo-liberalism and Domestic Capital: The Political Outcomes of the Economic Crisis in Thailand " The Journal ofDevelopment Studies 41, no. 2 (2005); Kanishka Jayasuriya and Kevin Hewison, "The Antipolitics of Good Governance," Critical Asian Studies 36, no. 4 (2004).
244 245
Chapter Five outlined how Thailand's national development policies before the
1997 financial crisis incorporated HACCP as a strategy for making the Thai seafood industry competitive in the global market. For the crabmeat industry, differentiating the crab resource and the maekhaa and phae was central to this competitiveness, essentially a revaluation process that took on new meaning and intensity after the 1997 financial crisis and during the recovery under Prime Minister Thaksin. This chapter examines how
HACCP as a global governance system became localized in Thailand as a means to maintain Thai social structures and power. I first explore the environmental impacts of transformingpuumaa into a NTC through state and corporate HACCP practices that revalued the resource within EOI policies that mirrored the old tax farming practices from the monarchy. Then I explore the racialization ofHACCP by the Thai seafood industry and its connection to Thaksin' s new social contract.
The Sufficiency Economy: Crabs are Like Mice
In the spring of 2006, the provincial offices of the Thai DOF released a preliminary report revealing that blue swimming crab had surpassed its maximum sustainable yield (MSY), and were unable to reproduce fast enough to keep up with the fishing effort.2 The phae believed that Phillips's strategy to buy the whole village led to a bidding war for puumaa which increased the prices and brought small trawlers into the fishery resulting in overexploitation of the resource.3 Conversely, US corporate
2 Warapom Dechboon, Hassapong Somchanakij, and Yuttana Random, Blue Swimming Crab Fisheries in the Southern Gulf of Thailand (Bangkok: Thailand: Marine Fisheries Research and Development Bureau, Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, 2006), Draft.
3 While all the women described this see Nantani Choeklin, Owner Phae Niti. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 7 March 2006, Don Sak, Thailand. 246
executives believed their purchasing policies-buying only large crabs and no female crabs-made their efforts sustainable.4 However, they did not see how HACCP and other quality criteria segmented the market into export and domestic quality crabs that supported overfishing. Meanwhile, Thai corporate executives saw no reason to conserve the natural resource, believing that "crabs in nature are like mice, they are scavengers that have lots of eggs and we are never worried about mice being wiped out."5 In reality, the over exploitation of blue swimming crabs is the result of revaluing the resource through
HACCP under EOI policies that mirrored the tax farming system created by the monarchy and Sino-Thai merchants centuries earlier.
As I outlined in Chapter Five, Sino-Thai merchants won the rights to exploit fisheries resources by bidding on who could collect the most taxes from processing and selling fish caught by villagers, leading to over exploitation. These conditions and the social structures that support them are reconstituted through neoliberal EOI policies in
Thailand, but were intensified by Thaksin's economic growth policies. Under Thaksin, the NESDB adopted King Bhumipon's sufficiency economic policy for the country's
Ninth Development Plan (2002-2006). 6 This philosophy stressed the Buddhist middle path in an attempt to create a "development strategy that would reduce the vulnerability
4 Norman Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 16 February 2007, Salisbury, MD.
5 Panisuan Chamnaanwet, Managing Director, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 22 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
6 The King had actually stressed this philosophy for thirty years. Royal Thai Government, National Economic and Social Development Board, Summary ofthe Ninth National Social and Economic Development Plan: the Sufficiency Economy, 2002-2006 (Bangkok: 2002): available from http://www.chaipat. or. th/journal/ decOO/ eng/e_economy .html (accessed 21 April 2006 ). 247
of the nation to shocks and excesses that may arise as result of globalization."7 While the goal was good governance and sustainable development, in practice the policy intensified
Thailand's EOI policies by favoring industries that used Thai inputs and domestic capital, especially seafood and agriculture. 8 The grandest manifestation of these policies came under Prime Minister Thaksin's "Kitchen of the World" project, which sought to increase the export of Thai cuisine and selected Thai ingredients as non-traditional commodities, blurring the commodification of culture with raw ingredients.9 The government launched a major marketing campaign and a new set of quality standard labels that certified not only food, but also Thai restaurants located around the world. The Traceability Project supported these efforts but also institutionalized HACCP for all exported foods, not just a select few, under the banner of modernizing Thailand's food system. Under the
Sufficiency Economy, corporate HACCP crabmeat standards and product codes became state standards, which added value to the resource and sanctioned high volume exports of
Thai natural resources processed as non-traditional commodities.
To understand the environmental changes that took place, we need to understand how the blue swimming crab resource was revalued. Based on my fieldwork, there are several areas of value production in the networks and I have broadly divided these into two categories: market and cultural value. Market value incorporates the industrialized production and economic context of the crabmeat while the cultural value is related to the culinary uses of crabmeat in the United States and in Thailand. Both forms of value
7 Ibid.( accessed.).
8 Articles from the Bangkok Post outline this shift and goals to increase fish exports, see for example Sompom Thapanachai, "Food Seen as Best Bet in Recession," Bangkok Post, 30 October 1999.
9 Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Thailand Food Traceability Project, (Bangkok: National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards, 2006). 248
creation influence each other and converged to increase pressure on the crab resource in specific ways, and was exacerbated by the bifurcated Thai fisheries management system.
Market and Cultural Value
Once Phillips implemented a stronger HACCP plan, their strategy to capture the crab relied on loans spread liberally across the southern Thai peninsula that transformed smaller maekhaa into phae by building mini plants. Byrd created more maekhaa by establishing steaming stations along Thailand's southern beaches. From Lloyd's perspective, this gave Phillips a leading edge-the ability to increase their market share through new organizational and technological innovations such as reconfiguring the networks and HACCP. This advantage only lasted for a little while, as Lloyd admitted,
"I gave the fishermen loans that I knew I wasn't going to get back because I knew that we were riding a wave that was heading toward the shore."1° From the phae 's perspective,
"Once Phillips built the mini plants then everyone wanted to be a supplier and the price got high and there was strong competition among the suppliers."11 In buying the whole village and privatize the resource, Phillips, as well as Byrd International and Pakfoods, set in motion a bidding war for puumaa that attracted more fishermen to the fishery. In effect, HACCP and the bidding war overcapitalized the fishery at the point of processing.
The only way to attract fishermen and a supplier away from a competing company was to offer a loan or a higher price for the crabs. In the early stages of resource capture, suppliers paid twelve baht per kilo of crab (approximately fifty cents),
10 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 3 January 2007, Berlin, MD.
11 Suwanii Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 26 April 2006, Phumriang, Thailand. 249
but since 1997, suppliers have paid between 140-160 baht per kilo ($4.00 in 2006). 12
Rather than offer higher prices, Pakfoods refused to take suppliers back or purchase other products from them if they refused to sell crabmeat to the company. 13 However, between
1997-2000 other US and Thai companies entered the fishery and began bidding for the crab while taking advantage of the infrastructure built by Phillips.14 The bidding war to capture the resource through maekhaa and phae was not the only way that puumaa were revalued.
The US companies' made the price for crab dependent on the size of the crab, its condition, and the sex of the crab. Thus larger male crabs were worth more money to fishermen and suppliers, as they were in the United States but in Thailand companies had greater control over the distribution of the catch. As discussed in Chapter Five, this distinctly American cultural value became part of the crabmeat product codes instituted by the National Food and Agricultural Products Standards Office that stipulate three sizes of crabs based on their weight per kilogram (See Table 11). 15 Crabs are now priced according to these size standards with the A size fetching the highest price. The A sized crabs go primarily to the export market, which also takes B sizes, while C sizes and
12 Kanjana Maniwan, Former HACCP Compliance Director, Phillips Foods Thailand, and Handy International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded, 7 June 2006, Hat Yai, Thailand.
13 Nuttha Maneerat, Manager, Royal Sea Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 13 June 2006, Hat Y ai, Thailand.
14 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
15 Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft of the National Food and Agricultural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab, (Bangkok: National Food and Agricultural Product Standards Office, Agricultural Commodities and Food Standards Office, 2004). 250
smaller are left for the domestic market. This segmented market means that juvenile crabs now supply the local Thai market placing additional pressure on the resource.
Table 11. Thai Crabmeat Product Codes
General Quality Grades of Grades of Smell Crabmeat
Above: Grades and standards for Thai crabmeat. Source: Data from Royal Thai Government. Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives. Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft of the National Food and Agricultural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab. Bangkok: National Food and Agricultural Product Standards Office, Agricultural Commodities and Food Standards Office, 2004.
But this standardized sizing system created new forms of domestic competition.
During the high tourist season in Thailand (December- February), the price for A sized crabs skyrocketed in tourist areas like Phuket where local restaurants were willing to pay small-scale fishermen more money for their catch. 16 As a result, prices varied province to province and US companies had to compete with highly capitalized resorts, many owned
16 Maneerat, Manager, Royal Sea Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 251
either by Sino-Thai or foreign companies. 17 Similarly, Thai crab standards reinforced earlier corporate policies that stipulated suppliers not purchase female crabs, especially those with an egg sack as Maryland conservation law had required until 1983. The Thai standards placed a low market value on female crabs and phae pay fishermen seventy to eighty baht for female crabs with an egg sack, and 150-180 baht for female crabs without an egg sack. 18 But Thai foodways places a high value on female crabs with an egg sack, and thus egg bearing female crabs were often separated during the sorting process at phae and maekhaa and sold on the local markets. This meant a high margin for suppliers who bought the egg-bearing females at low prices and sold them at much higher prices.
Thailand's crab resource was also revalued by producing culturally recognizable crabmeat for the US market in the form of jumbo lump, backfin, and the other grades.
One of Phillips' goals in going offshore was to produce a restaurant quality crab cake, which meant crab cakes made primarily from jumbo lump with little filler such as bread crumbs. As the most expensive grade because of its cultural value, this is where
Chesapeake crabmeat companies made their profits, and Thai suppliers all recalled that initially, when Phillips was buying crabmeat picked inside women's homes, the company bought only jumbo lump grades.19 Once the company established the mini plants and other companies entered the sector, companies began purchasing all of the crabmeat
17 The price of crabmeat also had to include "T money"-bribes paid to local police and the chao pho or the provincial elite who were Sino-Thai in each province.
18Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft of the National Food and Agricultural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab. Data on prices based on fieldwork with procurement officers.
19 See for example, Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 252
grades. But the lower grades remained hard to sell in the United States, according to
Lloyd, and as restaurant quality crab cakes became more popular, restaurants and the food service industry began demanding only jumbo lump grades:
It's just the American prejudice of wanting the jumbo lump because it's the most expensive, high end product, but you also have salesmen who are working on commission and of course they want to sell the most expensive grade to get a better commission.20
By 1998, all of the companies experienced this problem-a shortage of colossal and jumbo lump with a surplus of special, backfin and claw meat. One of the solutions was to force customers to purchase at least forty to fifty percent of an order (either a full shipping container or a palette) in the lower grades of crabmeat.21
Pakfoods created a different solution. They used existing sales connections in
Europe and their EU food safety certifications to export the claw meat to Europe where it commanded a higher price because culturally it was not considered a "lower grade."
Another solution, according to Nick, was to create frozen crab cakes using the special grade:
We needed something to do with the special. Special doesn't bring good money but it gives the most meat, like one can of jumbo equals five cans of special; that's just crab anatomy. So we developed our crab cake to make better use of the crab.22
Pakfoods and several other companies realized that US restaurants needed different price points that would meet their customer base and began creating a variety of proprietary
20 Byrd, Fonner Director of International Operations, Phillips foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
21 Whittington III, Director oflnternational Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
22 Chamnaanwet, Managing Director, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 253
blends of lower grades, mixing backfin and special or claw and special for specific restaurant customers. 23 This practice mirrored the Chesapeake industry's ability to create specialty packs and thus gave the imported crabmeat elements of a domestic quality convention. But the cultural and market value ofjumbo lump continued to increase, and
Khun Kan recalled, "When I started with Phillips the jumbo lump was only 250 baht per kilo and now it is 1200 baht" ($30 in 2006).24
But the increased value of blue swimming crab is also a result of the increased number ofphae purchasingpuumaa. While maekhaa only buy from small-scale fishermen, phae prefer to buy from trawlers who give them more volume. The expansion of the phae and the increased prices paid to fishermen changed the fishery from a small- scale enterprise to an overcapitalized commercial fishery by attracting trawlers to the fishery. Trawlers can carry more than 1000 crab traps and harvest three to four tons of crab in a night compared to the eight to ten kilograms harvested by small-scale fishermen.25 This is a familiar pattern in Thailand and one that has led to conflicts between small-scale fishers, who are mostly Muslim in Southern Thailand, and the Thai state and Sino-Thai financed trawlers. 26 US corporate executives noted that Thailand was
23 Alice Oui, Vice-President of Marketing, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 17 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand; Bob Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 1April2005, Arnold, MD.
24 Jumbo lump retailed for $30 a pound in the United States. Maniwan, Former HACCP Compliance Director, Phillips Foods Thailand, and Handy International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
25 Anonymous, "Blue. Swimming Crab Conservation," Thai Rat News, 3 May 2006.
26 In many cases, the crews working on the trawlers are Burmese immigrants, but my research did not include a comprehensive survey of fishing crews. 254
the only country that had "geared up" by introducing trawlers, which increased the volume of crabs and crabmeat, but did not decrease the price.27
Volume is a key factor in non-traditional commodities and EOI strategies. First, companies need to produce enough volume of crabmeat to cover their overhead costs of production and shipping-costs that are tied to the exchange rate. An exchange rate of twenty-seven to forty-eight baht to the dollar meant producing at least 400 kilos (half a ton) per day.28 Phillips and other US companies required phae and maekhaa to supply at least one ton a month and some of the larger phae produced one ton per day. 29 More importantly, once the networks began producing this volume, the shipping containers had to keep arriving in the United States because as Norman admitted, "when the containers stop, the money stops and you lose your suppliers and fishermen to someone else."30
EOI policies created an unsustainable economy of scale reinforced by assumptions about the marine environment and the principles of the Sufficiency Economy. For example, the
BOI requires that companies show evidence of enough raw materials in the country to sustain production, but this requirement does not apply to fisheries, which are assumed to be abundant. BOI officials stated that they assume there are enough fish in Thai waters and that "Conservation is out of our scope, we just need to know which suppliers the
27 Lloyd Byrd, Fonner Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD. In the late 1990s, Phillips and Byrd produced crabmeat in the Philippines and Indonesia on a variety of different islands in these countries. They state that the fishery in these countries remains a small-scale endeavor.
28 Chamnaanwet, Managing Director, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
29 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
30 Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly F eltault, digitally recorded. 255
company will buy from and those suppliers must be registered with DOF."31 In this way, new forms of value and competition to produce exports for economic growth contributed to the overfishing and overcapitalization of the blue swimming crab fishery in Thailand.
The bidding war and revaluation of crabmeat under EOI and HACCP have maintained social and environmental relationships established by the tax farming system of
Thailand's monarchy. However, the BOI's comment that conservation is beyond their scope of responsibilities raises questions about the role of the DOF in this process.
Decentralized Fisheries Management
The Thai DOF has always been simultaneously charged with conserving and industrializing the country's fisheries resources.32 One department is responsible for conservation of marine resources and livelihood security for small-scale fishers, while another is responsible for increasing seafood exports. Since the 1990s, this has meant adding value and improving export quality through inspection services and other technical assistance. This dualistic role placed these offices at odds with each other at the provincial level, a situation that intensified under Thailand's decentralization strategy.
This new governance system meant that two completely different knowledge bases existed that were not connected in terms of policy or practice. The result was a division of labor and knowledge that left conservation as the responsibility of small-scale fishermen, suppliers, and other interested parties.
31 On the BOI, see Board of Investment Representative, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 13 July 2006, Bangkok, Thailand.
32 Hugh Smith, A Review ofthe Aquatic Resources and Fisheries ofSiam, with Plans and Recommendations for their Administration, Conservation, and Development (Bangkok: Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center, 1983 [1925]), Special Report No. 4. 256
For example, the conservation offices in Songkhla published a multi-year study on the blue swimming crab fishery in 2006 in reaction to decreasing harvests and complaints by small-scale fishermen. 33 The report provides a detailed description of the biology of the crab and the fishing gear used by trawlers and small-scale fishermen and its impacts. However, the report notes that starting in 1997 trawlers began fishing within the two mile coastal zone reserved for small-scale fishermen and conflicts arose between the two groups. Furthermore,phae and maekhaa, and several environmental NGOs working in southern Thailand, had seen blue swimming crabs get smaller in size while prices for puumaa continued to rise. Although the report dates these changes between
1997 and 2003, the conservation biologists could not understand why these changes had taken place and there is no mention of exports, the increasing number ofphae, the presence of US or Thai transnational companies, or HACCP and segmented markets.
In my interviews with the fishery conservation biologists who authored the report,
I learned that provincial conservation offices of the DOF had very little knowledge of
Phillips-the borisatmae-or the revaluation processes and restructuring in the networks that had taken place. 34 In fact, the biologists had only learned of Phillips and crabmeat exports in 2004, almost ten years after the company had entered Thailand. After I spent a morning with these conservation biologists in Songkhla, one of them walked me across the DOF compound to another building that housed the offices for seafood inspection and export promotion. The women in this office produced the HACCP standards (in
33 Dechboon, Somchanakij, and Random, Blue Swimming Crab Fisheries in the Southern Gulf of Thailand.
34 Department of Fisheries, Songkhla Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 12 June 2006, Songkhla, Thailand. 257
English), the BOI requirements for establishing a crabmeat export business, a set of data on factories, inspections, and export volumes, and brochures on the types of technical assistance and training the office provides to US and Thai companies, Thai seafood workers, and their new programs for small to medium enterprises (SMEs )-the phae.
The head of the office explained that her office, and the one in Surat Thani, gave priority status to US and Thai seafood corporations and provided HACCP training for workers and inspected factories and mini plants. "In fact," she said, "we used to provide consulting services to the United States and Thai corporations, but that was in 1996 when we created the HACCP regulations for the mini plants. Now it is a conflict of interest so we don't consult anymore."35 This was all news to the conservation biologists.
This asymmetry in knowledge and state of confusion is structured into the DOF at the provincial level and connected to the position of seafood as a NTC. Regional offices, such as those in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, are responsible for issuing licenses and enforcing fisheries regulations. 36 The Central offices, like those in Surat Thani and
Songkhla, are responsible for research, conservation, and breeding programs
(aquaculture), which are considered conservation programs. Except for aquaculture, these conservation offices are exceptionally underfunded by the main DOF office in
Bangkok.37 The Songkhla and Surat Thani offices also support the inspection labs, inspection officers, food scientists, and other experts charged with increasing the export
351bid. The inspection offices now provide a list of consultants who work with the companies having quality problems.
36 Department of Fisheries, Nakhon Sri Thammarat Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 19 April 2006, Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand.
37 Ibid. 258
volume and quality of crabmeat, and high value seafood in general, as part of Thailand's development strategy. The offices responsible for increasing exports through quality and inspection have seen their budgets increase since the mid 1990s. 38 The result is that conservation in Thailand has been circumscribed by the creation of value. But claims to livelihood security for small-scale fishermen play a significant role as well.
The only regulations strongly enforced by the DOF for blue swimming crab relate to HACCP and other quality certification systems.39 Indeed, interviews with suppliers, fishermen, US and Thai companies, and even fisheries officials showed that knowledge of Thai conservation regulations for puumaa varied widely. All groups were aware that fishermen had to obtain a license each year based on their fishing gear. But licenses were not required for crab traps-the gear most used by trawlers-and so this sector of the fishery remained undocumented by conservation offices.40 Many conservation officers, suppliers, and corporate executives stated that Thailand did not have any specific conservation regulations for blue swimming crab, such as seasons or gear restrictions.
However, since 1983 Code 32(7) of the Thai Fishery Act has prohibited the harvesting of egg-bearing female blue swimming crabs between October and December.41 Other
38 Department of Fisheries, Fishery Inspection Auditor, Inspection Office, Interview by Kelly Feltault, 27 April 2006, Phunphim, Thailand. Phunphim is in Surat Thani province.
39 This includes those for the EU and UK, like the British Retail Consortium, as well as the new Thai quality certification called 'Q Mark' which the government hopes will be accepted as an equivalent system for the EU. Q Mark was launched in 2004 as part of the Kitchen of the World project.
40 Department of Fisheries, Nakhon Sri Thammarat Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault.
41Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Announcement: Outlawing the Harvesting of Crab with External Eggs, in Fishery Act 1947, Code 32(7), (Bangkok, 1983). 259
conservation officers suggested that the laws always come after the problem. 42 Despite the confusion over actual regulations, conservation officers suggested that "there is the law and then there is reality, and they are two different things. "43
The reality for the conservation offices is that small-scale fishermen must earn a living. According to the DOF conservation officers, regulations that reduce fishing also reduce the income of fishermen and then "fishermen will protest, they will work against the Department and do illegal things. So we have to keep them working with the
Department."44 US corporate executives like Lloyd Byrd acknowledged this need to keep fishermen working, legally or illegally:
You have to have receipts on all this stuff that you're producing, but you have to very skillfully make up receipts all the time because nobody fishes according to the seasons. Everybody fishes pretty much all year. But when you get ready to ship out the crabmeat, you have to have a receipt that shows you produced it during season. 45
This situation only reinforced the existing value creation methods, especially volume and the need to maintain the relationships between fishermen and suppliers. However, conservation officers were not aware of these practices.
Instead, rather than enforce laws, provincial conservation offices focus their efforts on education campaigns to encourage voluntary conservation of the resource.46
42 The only other conservation measure is a general authority to close a fishing area for specific species. While conducting fieldwork, the waters surrounding Chumpon were closed for mackerel fishing.
43 Department of Fisheries, N akhon Sri Thammarat Province, Interview by Kelly F eltault.
44 Department of Fisheries, Songkhla Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault.
45 Byrd, Former Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
46 Department of Fisheries, Songkhla Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault. 260
The primary conservation activity for puumaa is the Crab Bank (thanaakaan puu) and was initiated by Phae Niti and Phae Wiya with support from their maekhaa suppliers, fishermen, provincial DOF offices, and environmental NGOs in southern Thailand.47
The Crab Bank establishes holding tanks at the phae and in villages for two purposes: to increase the spawning capacity and to reduce the number of juveniles harvested. In the first effort, egg-bearing female crabs are placed in the tanks until they spawn. Then the water filled with the zoeae (transparent crab larvae) is dumped back into the sea and the females are steamed and picked for export (See Figure 28). In the second effort, small crabs that are harvested are put in the tanks to grow until they reach a larger (and more valuable) size. Both banking efforts face challenges, as sponge crabs are still a delicacy on the Thai market and the grow-out process does not allow juveniles to mate and reproduce the stock.
Figure 28. A deposit at the Crab Bank Deposit. The white dots under the magnifying glass are blue swimming crab zoeae at PhaeNiti's Crab Bank. Source: Photo by the author.
47 Somsak Choeklin and Nantani Choeklin, Blue Swimming Crab Conservation Project (Donsak, Thailand: PhaeNiti Crabmeat Supplier, 2000). 261
Not surprisingly, conservation officers complained that they still had problems getting fishermen and phae to participate, but blamed it on the fishermen who "don't think that way, they say 'I can make money ifl sell this female crab to the market'" where it carries a high value.48 Similarly, according to conservation officers, suppliers often do not want to participate in conservation efforts because they "can't stop their business, all their money is tied up in processing crab, so they have to process and fishermen have to fish."49 But these challenges highlight the fact that conservation efforts target small-scale fishermen's associations, maekhaa, and phae, while ignoring the rest of the actors in the networks, and the different forms of value creation taking place. More importantly, this fisheries management system is geared toward EOI policies and the Sufficiency Economy that by 2002 increasingly relied on the export of
Thai natural resources. However, the institutionalization ofHACCP and Thaksin's new development policies not only revalued the resource, they also reaffirmed the existing class structure in the Thai seafood industry, as Sino-Thai families kept their corporations and their position as seafood buyers and exporters. Yet the state and these corporations also embedded existing racial constructions into the crabmeat networks through HACCP that intersected with Prime Minister Thaksin' s new social contract.
Race, Purity, and HACCP
The global crabmeat industry in Thailand is embedded in a network of personal relationships, but trust is governed by HACCP's traceability and science-based risk assessment requirements. The institutionalization ofHACCP and its ensuing forms of
48 Department of Fisheries, Songkhla Province, Interview by Kelly Feltault.
49 Ibid. 262
trust differentiated more than just the crabmeat. After Thaksin took office in 2001, he outlined a new social contract that sought to transform rural and coastal villagers into entrepreneurs through moralized notions of community and Thainess. 50 These morals defined communities and villagers that could compete in the global economy as modem, happy, and possessing social capital and knowledge. This form of governance focused on creating and activating desirable forms of conduct that linked support for rural SMEs to Thai national identity and sanctioned entrepreneurial behavior. HACCP certification for phae and maekhaa became part of this plan, but also a platform for racializing safe seafood and maintaining existing social relations that did not consider Muslims as Thai.
Thailand's population is eight percent Muslim, but the majority of Muslims have always live in Southern Thailand.51 Muslim villages are located along the coasts on both sides of the peninsula from Phuket and Surat Thani southward to Songkhla, and the three most southern provinces bordering Malaysia are seventy percent Muslim.52 However,
50 Jayasuriya and Hewison, "The Antipolitics of Good Governance."
51 The population statistics for Muslims in Thailand are debated. All of the literature, and the United States State Department, acknowledges that the Thai government is not accurately collecting census data from this population, especially in the three most southern provinces of Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat which are at the center of a separatist movement for Yawi speaking Muslims in Thailand. The figures given here reflect the revised statistics. U.S. Department of State, Thailand: International Religious Freedom Report (Washington DC, 2003): available from http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2003/24323.htm (accessed 8 March 2008).
52 Data on Thailand's southern Muslims from Angela Burr, "Religious Diversity: Social Structure and Conceptual Unity: Islam and Buddhism in a Southern Thai Coastal fishing Village," Journal ofthe Siam Society 60 (1972); Andrew Forbes, ed., The Muslims of Thailand, Volume I: Historical and Cultural Studies (Ranchi: Catholic Press, 1988); Andrew Forbes, ed., The Muslims of Thailand; Volume II: The Politics ofthe Malay Speaking South (Ranchi: Catholic Press, 1989); Michel Gilquin, The Muslims of Thailand (Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2002); Olli-Pekka Ruohmaki, Fishermen No More?: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages (Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1999); Apiradee Sajjapant, "The Muslim Ethnicity Problem in Southern Thailand" (MA Thesis, Duke University, 1987); Phuwadol Songprasert, "Chronic Conflict in the Three Southern Border Provinces of Thailand," in Knowledge and Conflict Resolution: the Crisis ofthe Border Region ofSouthern Thailand, ed. Utai Dulyakasem and Lertchai Sirichai (Nakhorn Si Thammarat, Thailand: Walailak University Press, 2005). 263
these three southern provinces-Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat-are Yawi speaking
Muslim, a distinct ethnic minority that has maintained a separate language, history, and traditions more often linked to Malaysia. They do not consider themselves Thai, and find many of the Thai government's development efforts anti-Islamic. The remaining coastal
Muslim villages are Thai Muslim, a religious minority who speak Thai (the southern dialect phaaktai), and consider themselves Thai, referring to themselves as khan thai is/am (Thai people who follow Islam). Villagers in both groups earn their living primarily from small-scale fishing and agriculture, trade through maekhaa, and wage labor in seafood factories and on rubber plantations.
As Stoler points out, the "hygiene of colonialism" became a transnational concept during the colonial era, and linked dark skin with contamination, impurity, and backwardness. 53 Although Thailand was never formally colonized, the Thai monarchy made Bangkok the colonizer of the nation's countryside, especially Southern Thailand, which was declared backward because of the Muslim population on the peninsula. 54
These ideas shaped the concept of "Thainess" starting with the cultural nationalism program of Phibun in 1939 and continued through the Thaksin government in 2001.
Under Phibun, cultural mandates attempted to solidify Thai identity by dictating the
53 Ann Stoler, "Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in 20th Century Colonial Cultures," American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (1989).
54 Penny Van Estrik, Materializing Thailand (New York: Berg Publishing, 2000). Prior to this, Southern Thailand was left to its own devices operating as a vassal state, but allowed to keep language, dress, and other cultural distinctions that marked the region as Muslim. 264
characteristics of national culture: flourishing growth and development; social orderliness; the harmonious progress of the nation; and good public morals. 55
This concern for presenting a modern, civilized Thailand continued under Sarit's regime (1958-1973), but focused on wholesomeness, cleanliness, properness, and resourcefulness. 56 Under Phibun, Muslim dress and the Y awi language were banned and decried as backward while Sarit attempted to modernize Southern Muslims through economic development. This developmental social contract emphasized military order, private capital, and the eventual trickling down of benefits to villages, but in the south this meant containing Communist radicals and Muslim separatists.57 Sarit and subsequent Thai leaders have sought to control the south by redistributing land to
Buddhist Thais resettled from the North East and through military action that led to guerilla fighting in the southern provinces.58 By the 1980s, the National Culture
Commission began a spiritual development project that identified undesirable Thai values as: the lack of Thai nationalism; a weak work ethic; and a lack ofreligious (Buddhist) ethics.59 Southern Muslim communities all exhibited these characteristics according to the government and thus this hygiene of colonialism soon came to influence the implementation ofHACCP as definitions ofThai-ness took on increased significance
55 More specifically, laws required all citizens to wear Western clothes; to eat a more Western diet instead of rice, nam phrik (chili sauce), and "unmentionable creepy crawlies." Suwannathat-Pian quoted in Ibid., 102.
56 Ibid.
57 Hewison, "Neo-liberalism and Domestic Capital: The Political Outcomes of the Economic Crisis in Thailand ".
58 Songprasert, "Chronic Conflict in the Three Southern Border Provinces of Thailand."
59 Van Estrik, Materializing Thailand. 265
under Thaksin's efforts to position rural populations as entrepreneurs in the global market.
When Phillips entered Thailand, their strategy of buying the whole village also recognized that the crab fishery was divided between Muslim and Buddhist fishing villages connected to Muslim and Buddhist maekhaa. Phillips' recognition of these social structures gave the company greater access to the resource, as Muslim and
Buddhist small-scale fishermen primarily sell to maekhaa in their village or a village where their wife has established social or kin networks.60 In each district (amphoe),
Phillips recruited at least one Muslim and one Buddhist supplier. 61 When the state institutionalized HACCP and other crabmeat product codes as part of Thai law in 2004, these regulations graded phae on a scale of A, B, or C. Phae receiving a C grade are put on a national list and incur additional inspections by the Thai DOF, such as random sampling, sanitary inspections, and microbiological tests of factory equipment. 62 My fieldwork revealed that the majority of C grade phae are Muslim, and Thai inspectors and companies have infused these standards with racial meaning.
In Surat Thani province, Phae Wiya was the Muslim supplier and Phae Niti the
Buddhist supplier for Phillips (See Figure 29). Although both phae follow the same
HACCP guidelines, Sino-Thai and Buddhist managers and HACCP team members, as well as seafood inspectors, continuously told me that Phae Wiya's crabmeat was a lower
6°For a further discussion of the matrilineal basis for trade networks and residency patterns, see Ruohmaki, Fishermen No More?: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages.
61 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
62 Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Memo to Provincial Fisheries Offices from the Director: Draft of the National Food and Agricultural Product Standards for Blue Swimming Crab. 266
Figure 29. Above left: PhiiNii, owner of Phae Niti, a Buddhist. Right: Suwanii, owner of Phae Wiya, a Muslim and therefore perceived to produce lower quality crabmeat than PhiiNii. Source: Photos by the author. quality because, according to them, Suwanii's darker skin signified an inherent laziness, the lack of "a management mind," untrustworthiness, and dirtiness.63 Taken together, these characteristics mean Muslim suppliers, like Suwanii, are incapable of producing quality crabmeat defined as white with a good, fresh smell, and free from pathogens and filth (especially bugs). More importantly, Muslim suppliers, fishermen, and factory workers are not to be trusted. This inherent untrustworthiness led Buddhist HACCP team leaders who worked in factories with predominantly by Muslim workers to praise the traceability system because it "let's us control their bad habits like sanitation" but "we don't have to do that with the Thai [Buddhist] workers." In this way, HACCP's traceability codes-the numbers given to suppliers and workers-and even the state
63 The sentiments and quoted statements outlined in this section were expressed by Buddhist HACCP team members and procurement officers and are a composite of statements from interviews and observations. I do not want to attribute these comments to specific teams or members, as race was a flash point issue during fieldwork. These stereotypes are discussed in Sajjapant, "The Muslim Ethnicity Problem in Southern Thailand". 267
product codes act as racial markers to Thai quality control staff, DOF inspectors, and procurement officers.
These racialized notions of Muslims were not confined to the seafood industry, and living in southern Thailand I witnessed them on a daily basis. 64 While many of my non-Muslim academic colleagues in Thailand have explained this as solely a class distinction, the connection between phenotype and intelligence, behavior and hygiene represents a racialized distinction rooted in religious difference that intersects with class.
Most expressions of Muslim otherness by non-Muslim Thais attribute a perceived darker skin color to undesirable personal qualities, such as garbage strewn villages and high birth statistics, which are viewed as a natural condition of Islamic people. This image is reinforced linguistically at the national and regional level.65 The word used for people of color from the Middle East, South Asia, or Africa is khon khaek, or guest. But this word is also used by Buddhist and Sino-Thais to refer to Muslims living in Thailand even though Muslims have resided in the Kingdom since the 13th century, much longer than many of the Chinese minorities. However, the word used to describe white Western foreigners is farang. 66 Despite the distinctions between the two Muslim groups, the Thai state and the Buddhist and Sino-Thai population view all Muslims as a single racialized
64 I first noticed these statements from my research assistant who was from a Sino Thai family on Phuket where forty percent of the population is Muslim. However, several of my colleagues at Walailak took me to events where these racial categories were displayed or enacted in public.
650n these terms, see specifically Arong Suthasasna, "Thai Society and the Muslim Minority," in The Muslims of Thailand, Volume Ji: The Politics ofthe Malay Speaking South, ed. Andrew Forbes (Ranchi: Catholic Press, 1989).
66 This word comes from the word for France and French people,farangset andfarang. But people of color from the United States or Europe are not called farang, but the word used for Muslims khaek. 268
religious minority-the "other" of Thailand. These racialized identities have been embedded in Thai cultural nationalism and development plans because Thai national identity has historically been connected to Theravada Buddhism by the Thai state. 67
This national narrative depicts Muslims as dark skinned, underdeveloped, lacking in hygiene, and devoid of an entrepreneurial spirit, which positioned Muslims as the antithesis to Thaksin's entrepreneurial villager. However, Phae Wiya challenged this narrative. Suwanii was the only supplier that had created her own brand of crabmeat sold within Thailand because:
Phillips had two problems-an oversupply of raw material that they could not process quick enough and rejection of their products. This made them slow down production. I realized that ifl only supplied Phillips-or another US company then I am reliant on US customers and fluctuations in seasonal sales. But finding my own market meant maintaining the fishermen and keeping my business operating. 68
Suwanii found other factories to accept her crabmeat when Phillips slowed down, as more American companies had entered the Thai market, but she primarily supplied
Pakfoods who co-packed for US companies. 69 But these companies still had problems with overproduction and slow downs, which meant she did not have a buyer even though fishermen continued to harvest crabs.
Rather than continue to rely on US companies and markets, Suwanii created her own brand, Puusotchaole (Fisherman's Fresh Crabmeat). The crabmeat is pasteurized-
67 Thai national identity is connected to three terms: nation, religion, and King. In this case, religion means Theravada Buddhism. See Gilquin, The Muslims of Thailand; Ruohmaki, Fishermen No More?: Livelihood and Environment in Southern Thai Maritime Villages.
68 Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
69 The other US companies besides Byrd, included Grand Bay and Blue Star. The other Thai companies included Songkhla Canning and Eastern Star Marine (both owned by Thai Union), and Samui Foods. By 1998 all of these companies were producing pasteurized blue swimming crabmeat in Thailand. 269
a significant technical upgrade that other phae like Phae Niti did not have. Then the crabmeat is packaged in plastic trays and graded as in the United States for lump, claw, and backfin and sold in Carrfour, Tops, Big C and Foodland grocery stores in Thailand.
Carrfour and Big C, like Tesco, are European grocery retailers that entered Thailand after the financial crisis through partnerships and investments with leading Thai food conglomerates, including CP Group. 70 These retailers stock their shelves with a mix of convenience products produced in Thailand and imported from Europe and elsewhere in
Asia. Carrfour and Tesco, the second and third largest grocery retailers in the world respectively, currently have over 500 stores across Thailand, including Surat Thani. 71 In addition, Suwanii also supplies CP Foods Inc. with crabmeat which they process into dumplings and Thai crab cakes sold in 7-11 stores throughout Thailand. CP is Thailand's largest agro-food corporation with operations in Thailand and overseas; they are also the world's second largest chicken producer and exporter. The company emphasizes quality and hygiene in its marketing and is the premier company attempting "to fulfill the vision of becoming the 'Kitchen of the World'" with exports of prepared Thai food. 72
But Suwanii had taken this one step further. In the spring of 2006, she was in the initial stages of becoming HACCP certified and obtaining an EU number under the
70 Hewison, "Neo-liberalism and Domestic Capital: The Political Outcomes of the Economic Crisis in Thailand "; Thomas Reardon and Rose Hopkins, "The Supermarket Revolution in Developing Countries: Policies to Address Emerging Tensions among Supermarkets, Suppliers and Traditional Retailers," The European Journal ofDevelopment Research 18, no. 4 (2006).
71 Supermarket News, "Top 25 Retailers Worldwide," Supermarketnews.com, 2007, available from http://supermarketnews.com/profiles/top25/top_ 25 _food_retailers_ worldwide/, (accessed 12 March 2008).
72 CP Foods LLL, "The CPF Group," 2007, available from http://www.cpf.co. th/new/index.html?session=a34a3bac31136cedaaa6c341 af4e96b3 &client=7 l 51 d76c5e7 6456f3 86869577252ld16&lang=en&site=cpf/frame.html&subsite=corporate/company0 l .html&theme=co mpanyOl, (accessed 6 March 2008). 270
Thaksin initiated SME programs. This step would allow her to export her brand of crabmeat directly to Europe, and she was no longer Phae Wiya, but Wiya Crab Products
Limited. She believes that working with Phillips, and learning about these international regulations, gave her the knowledge regarding food quality and safety, making her production standardized enough to compete on the world market as an SME entrepreneur described by Thaksin. However, although she knew the basic definitions of quality that originated in the Chesapeake, she had little understanding of how Americans and other
Westerners ate crabmeat.
During lunch on my first visit, Suwanii revealed that she had heard of crab cakes, but her husband had tried to make them and they were awful (her daughters said they were disgusting). Apparently, in translating the word "cake" they (and other suppliers) thought Americans ate crabmeat baked into flour and yeast baked goods, and so had made a vanilla cake with crabmeat. On several occasions, my visits to Suwanii ended with a lesson on how to make crab cakes at her house, which she and Suriyaa always filmed, and eventually my husband shipped a couple ofjars of Old Bay seasoning to me that I distributed to Suwanii. During one of these sessions, Suwanii told me that she had rented a booth at Thaifex, an upcoming international food trade show in Bangkok, and wanted to make the crab cakes to give away to potential customers during the show.
When N oong Oo and I attended Thaifex, the Wiya Crab Products Limited booth was mobbed with potential customers dining on crab cakes that had a hint of Old Bay flavor but the spice had been intensified with a good dose of Thai chilies (See Figure 30). As a
Muslim, Suwanii still faced racialized notions of quality and discrimination from Thai 271
crabmeat companies and inspectors, but was moving toward becoming a supplier to the
Kitchen of the World and competing on the world market.
Figure 30. Wiya Crab Products booth at Thaifex, 2006. The man on the right is Suwanii's husband, Suriyaa. Source: Photo by the author.
Summary
Thai notions of race have become institutionalized in the state product codes and
HACCP standards that differentiate crabmeat and suppliers. As a result, HACCP is not just a global governance system, but also a localized method for enclosing a resource and linking NTC to Thai national identity and the state's image as a modem state. Similarly, after the 1997 financial crisis and under Thaksin's Sufficiency Economy, the state and companies used HACCP to revalue the resource and expand EOI policies by making the country more competitive in the global market. The overall effect was to reaffirm the existing social relations in the Thai seafood industry and maintain the power of the Sino-
Thai families who owned companies like Pakfoods. Just as HACCP revalued the resource in Thailand, US companies used HACCP to add value to their product back in 272
the United States in order to make Maryland crab cakes an authenticity niche. Yet,
Suwanii used HACCP to not only add value to her products but to expand her customer base and mitigate the risks associated with supplying only one customer. HACCP remade nature and culture in Thailand through historical and new social and environmental relationships based on trust monitored through science-based risk assessments. In the next chapter, I examine how Phillips and Byrd first claimed the regional market for crabmeat and then created a national market based on two forms of value creation: the perceived authenticity of Maryland crab cakes and the industrial quality convention established by HACCP. CHAPTER 7
THE TASTE OF TRADITION FROM SOUTHEAST ASIA
Regional cuisines in the United States have undergone great change in the last half century by turning into a national fad every localized taste opportunity.
Sidney Mintz, Eating American
Chefs are the leaders in the field of food, and we are the led.
Charles Clover, The End of the Line
Phillips' first shipping container of pasteurized blue swimming crabmeat arrived in the United States in the summer of 1992 from their factory in the Philippines. The original goal of importing crabmeat was to eliminate competition for the resource in order to supply Phillips' all-you-can-eat buffets with year round crabmeat. The company also wanted to establish a branded line of restaurant quality frozen crab cakes for sale to restaurant chains that would be hand-made from lump meat and the Phillips family recipe. However, the company had not set up their production facility, and was faced with a surplus of crabmeat and a mountain of debt. Lloyd Byrd and Steve Phillips decided the company should sell some of the canned pasteurized crabmeat to "generate a little cash."1 But as Lloyd described, the product sat at the distributor's warehouse:
We had pasteurized it for maximum quality for manufacturing, but restaurants and retailers wouldn't even look at it-I couldn't even give this crabmeat away, could
1 Lloyd Byrd, Fonner Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD.
273 274
not give it away, because it was pasteurized, and because it was from the Philippines. 2
In Thailand, pasteurized blue swimming crabmeat was transformed into a non-traditional commodity because the state and the seafood industry made HACCP a key component of
EOI strategies and corporations used it to coordinate network activities. In both cases,
HACCP was a means for establishing an industrial quality convention and commercializing seafood safety as a point of competition in the global market by differentiating people and natural resources.
However upon arrival in the United States, the cultural value of imported crabmeat dropped. First, the product was pasteurized, and therefore associated with low quality frozen crab cakes, not restaurant quality crab cakes. Second, although chefs and restaurant owners purchased an increasing amount of fruits, vegetables, and even shrimp from developing countries, they equated imported crabmeat with inherently unsanitary conditions and practices in developing countries, "the connotation was that crab coming from anywhere outside the United States [was] unfit for human consumption."3 While the American foodview embraced globalized and industrialized food, Phillips and the other crabmeat importers would have to commercialize seafood safety in the United
States and change the palates of chefs from the domestic quality convention rooted in the taste of fresh crabmeat to an industrial convention of safety and convenience.
2 Ibid. At the time, Phillips used Langford Sysco's facilities on the Eastern Shore to hold their inventory.
3 Bob Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 1April2005, Arnold, MD. 275
Previous chapters have described the creation of the domestic quality convention and Maryland's redevelopment strategies, and analyzed the creation and institutionalization of the industrial quality convention in the context of Thailand's development plans. This chapter brings these processes together in an examination of how Phillips and Byrd transformed Maryland crab cakes from regional fare into an authenticity niche-a food that projects regional identity and connections to place but is coopted into the mass market, industrial food system.4 The undercurrent of this transformation entailed convincing chefs and distributors to serve, or "eat," a new food by changing their perceptions and buying habits. In other words, once Phillips and the other companies had a supply, they had to craft a demand by reshaping the market and cultural notions of quality. Those of us who eat at restaurants (consumers) were not the target market, but the target was rather those responsible for purchasing what we eat at restaurants-chefs, restaurant owners, and national distributors.
Marketing the Authenticity Niche, 1992-1999
According to Lloyd Byrd, he spent the summer of 1992 making sales calls to restaurants and seafood wholesalers along the Mid-Atlantic coast with little success.
Customers did not want pasteurized crabmeat produced in developing countries. Then:
We had an extremely big marketing tool that came along on the 15th of August and it was called Hurricane Andrew. And Hurricane Andrew came tearing up the coast and shut down all the southern [crabmeat] plants-in some cases tore them down totally. And all the people I'd been talking to about pasteurized crabmeat that didn't want the product, well I started getting these calls like "Uh, you know
4 Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry, 3rd ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007). 276
that Philippine meat you had? We'd be interested in it." So that's really how we got selling container loads and cases of crab meat as a commodity itself. Prior to that, we couldn't do it. Hurricane Andrew put this meat in people's hands 'cause there just wasn't any domestic meat. 5
But Phillips and other importers could not rely on environmental and market calamities to get chefs to try their new commodity. Instead, importers needed to change the meaning of pasteurized, imported crabmeat by differentiating their products based on the science of quality, connections to local provenance, and branding, and the development of long- term supply relationships with customers.
Crabmeat importers changed the meaning of imported, pasteurized crabmeat by marketing their products through what Warren Belasco calls "recombinant futures"- blending the modernist elements of food with the familiarity found in regional cuisines, making the foods simultaneously new and nostalgic.6 The modem elements of imported crabmeat, or the "backstage" presentation, highlighted the industrial quality convention by emphasizing HACCP's science of quality and traceability system. Companies projected this image behind the scenes to chefs, wholesalers and restaurant owners, conveying a message of convenience and risk-free products. Conversely, the "front stage" presentation made to diners, as well as restaurateurs and distributors embedded the product in the heritage and place of the Chesapeake, giving imported crabmeat a level of
5 Byrd, Former Director of International Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
6 Warren Belasco, Meals to Come: A History ofthe Future ofFood (Berkley: University of California Press, 2006). 277 authenticity. 7 Phillips was able to capitalize on the second approach more than other companies because of its status as a local Chesapeake restaurant and family history and therefore was able to create a public quality convention based on their brand's connection to heritage. However, the incorporation of many of the attributes from the domestic quality convention, such as grades, meant chefs could make restaurant quality Maryland crab cakes and other dishes that looked familiar to diners and allowed them to think they were eating crabmeat from the Chesapeake.
Chef to Chef
Initially importers focused on sales to restaurants since this was where
American's primarily consumed seafood. 8 However, rather than begin with an entirely new market unfamiliar with crabmeat and Maryland crab cakes, importers targeted chefs and restaurants in the Mid-Atlantic and along the Southeast coast from Pennsylvania to
Florida. This region was "the real blue crab market, the people who have a palate and knowledge for crab-the real crab connoisseur," because Pennsylvania and New Jersey were the main demographic for tourists vacationing in Ocean City, Maryland, and eating at Phillips Seafood restaurants 9 In addition, eastern cities and coastal areas had also experienced similar waterfront redevelopment projects as Baltimore and restaurants
7 I borrow this front stage and backstage framework from Warren Belasco, see Ibid.
8 In addition, supermarkets have a delayed payment structure whereas restaurants pay upon delivery.
9Maryland Office of Tourism Development, Annual Reports ofthe Office of Tourism Development (Baltimore: Maryland Department of Planning, 1995-2004); Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault; Paul Wall, Vice-President, Phillips Seafood Restaurants. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 19 May 2005, Ocean City, MD. 278 sought regional foods available year round. However, this was also the main market for the Chesapeake and other domestic crab packers, and thus importers first dispossessed the domestic industry from existing markets before expanding nationally.
Between 1992 and 1999 two marketing strategies became common practice to change the meaning of pasteurized crabmeat.10 These strategies targeted chefs and highlighted HACCP and pasteurization as an integral component of imported crabmeat's industrial quality convention for chefs, eventually expanding sales from Mid-Atlantic restaurants to national chain restaurants. Building on their position as a restaurateur,
Phillips knew that chefs would rather learn from other restaurant professionals. As part of their "Chef to Chef' marketing campaign, Phillips promoted their retired and long- time kitchen staff to new positions as product specialists and sent them out to work directly with chefs in other restaurants, "showing chefs how to use Phillips products and how chefs can make more money with Phillips products." 11 The Chef to Chef curriculum provided chefs in the Mid-Atlantic with cans of Phillips' imported crabmeat and recipes while Phillips' product specialists demonstrated how to make restaurant quality Maryland crab cakes, as well as how to store and handle the crabmeat in order to expand menus and crabmeat sales. In the second approach, companies that did not have
10 Information on marketing based on my interviews, as well as testimony and exhibits submitted as part of the USITC case. Information on Chef to Chef program from U.S. International Trade Commission, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, L.L.P., Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf of the Coalition for the Free Trade of Crab meat, Exhibit 18: Examples ofPhillips Promotional Materials, 12 June 2000.
11 Testimony of Mark Sneed, President Phillips Foods, see U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. lntemational Trade Commission, 15 June 2000, 189. 279 restaurant chains, such as Byrd International, developed the technique of "cuttings."12
For a cutting, a salesperson met with the chef of a restaurant and opened a can of their imported crabmeat (usually jumbo lump) and several cans of domestic crabmeat to compare the two on quality-color, shell fragments, taste, and grading standards.
Norman Whittington, General Manager and Global Procurement Officer for Byrd, stated,
"Part of highlighting our quality is showing the product, so sales people do cuttings at restaurants using competitors' meat and have chefs taste the product" and handle it as a way to demonstrate the quality. 13
Whether cooking with chefs or comparing the products side-by-side for chefs, companies stressed the benefits of pasteurization and HACCP as compared to fresh domestic blue crabmeat. Product comparison and pricing sheets described pasteurized imported crabmeat and fresh domestic meat as having the same "ideal meat characteristics" for flavor (See Table 12). 14 However, the "ideal characteristics" of pasteurized crabmeat emphasized its eighteen-month shelf-life but listed the shelf-life for domestic crabmeat under "properties and seasonality." According to the "realistic meat characteristics," pasteurization insures the ideal meat characteristics of imported crabmeat, which also has consistent quality and is shell free and therefore labor free for
12 This sales technique is still done today and comparisons are now made between different imported crabmeat brands rather than the domestic crabmeat. I have been to two cuttings-one in a restaurant and the other at the Boston Seafood Show. See also Norman Whittington III, Director of International Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 28 October 2005, Berlin, MD.
13 Ibid.
14 This comparison chart also listed other crab species such as Jonah, King crab, and Peeky Toe. See Phillips Foods Inc., Cooking with Crab Meat: A Comparison ofAmerican's Blue Swimming Crab to Popular Crab Varieties (Phillips Foods Inc., 2005): available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/index.cfrn?fa=iPa.page&page_ id=54&site_ id=2 (accessed 3 F ebmary 2006). 280 restaurants. However, the domestic meat has "variable consistency," high shell content, and could be old. Such pricing sheets added to the backstage message demonstrated during the cuttings and Chef to Chef training.
Table 12. Product Comparison and Pricing Sheet Descriptions
Source: Data from Phillips Foods Inc. Cooking with Crab Meat: A Comparison of American's Blue Swimming Crab to Popular Crab Varieties. 2005, Available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/index.cfm?fa=iPa. page&page_ id=54&site_ id=2 (accessed 3 February 2006).
Shell fragments were listed multiple times on pricing and comparison sheets and often these critical control points (CCPs) were featured as a cost saving step for restaurant kitchens. According to Phillips, their food prep workers could only de-shell four pounds of crabmeat an hour, but they paid their prep-room workers $8.74 an hour adding $2.18 per pound per person to the cost of domestic crabmeat.15 Shell-free
15Testimony of Steve Phillips, see U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA- 201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U.S. International Trade Commission, 187. 281 crabmeat added value for restaurants and companies like Seawatch, who made crab cakes for McDonald's, because it meant lower labor costs in the kitchen and more convenience for chefs. Pasteurization added value because restaurants could store the crabmeat under refrigeration for up to a year and a half without fear of the product spoiling and subsequent losses in purchasing budgets. But importers also emphasized the consistency of imported crabmeat, opening can after can to guarantee the consistency in grading, color, smell, and texture as a result of the CCPs. Finally, the volume and year round availability of imported crabmeat meant crab cakes were no longer strictly a summer menu item and chefs could "play" with the product in new ways, making the familiar novel through new dishes. 16 This meant expanded menus with new items and more choices, which equated to new customers for restaurants.
However, working with chefs also gave importers an opportunity to, "find out what exactly they're looking for in a product, and what's going to keep them in a brand recognition type situation."17 This included specialty blends of grades, which Bob
Stryker called proprietary picks:
A lot of the different picks that we came up with over the years have been designed around what a chef wants. There have been your traditional picks that come out of a crab, and we've done a lot of custom picks over the years based on just keeping in touch with the direct restaurant routes. 18
Like domestic crabmeat packers, imported crabmeat had the flexibility of production to meet changing customer requests. Yet, such requests linked the "chef direct1y to the
16 Testimony of Mark Sneed in Ibid.
17 Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
18 Ibid. 282 processing house" in Thailand or elsewhere through a brand, creating the perception of buying directly from the fishermen while also buying from one supplier-the importer. 19
Ownership of the main factories overseas reinforced the image of directly sourcing crabmeat fresh off a local boat even though processing took place in Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and from multiple small suppliers in these countries.20 HACCP, as enacted in Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries, gave importers the ability to standardize products (if not production processes) across countries, making crabmeat from Thailand and the Philippines interchangeable. However, companies maintained the flexibility of the domestic quality convention while also codifying, monitoring, and controlling corporate and customer-specific standards, embedding chefs and restaurants in the knowledge production process of their networks. From this vantage point, the networks could handle high volumes of information coordinated and codified through
HACCP while the interactions and relationships between all of the actors became denser and more specialized to produce a differentiated, yet standardized product that met industrial quality conventions. This embedding process highlights the overlapping of domestic and industrial quality conventions as it facilitated brand loyalty, introducing a public quality convention for chefs.
HACCP itself became a marketing tool in order to dispel perceptions of unsanitary conditions in developing countries and highlight quality control. The traceability system combined with ownership of processing factories allowed importers to
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid. Ocean Technology also owns its factories in Mexico and so mirrors the ownership structure of Phillips and Byrd International. 283 locate their products in specific places and production conditions, and establish a high level of product identity closely associated with safety. Importers produced brochures, photo albums, and DVDs that visually showed customers their production sites and processes in developing countries.21 These materials generally outlined the important
CCPs in the crabmeat HACCP system in Asia-live crabs, organoleptic testing, shell removal, time and temperature checks, and the traceability system. Companies also stressed microbiological testing conducted by their in-house laboratories and third party audits of their facilities, as well as FDA on site audits. Importers illustrated all of these safety measures with photos of Asian women dressed in lab coats, masks and hats branded with a company logo performing these tests, such as looking through microscopes, monitoring the pasteurization process, and picking shells out of crabmeat.
The message equated seafood safety with ownership of the factories and control over the production process. Ownership conveyed trust through product identity embodied in the brand, and importers described how ownership allowed them to better monitor quality because of traceability and their connections with local communities.
These messages and images made imported crabmeat production place-based for chefs, restaurateurs, and wholesalers, but in specific ways. The illustrations focus on the laboratory conditions of the main processing factories owned by Phillips and Byrd, and not on the mini plants or steaming stations owned by Thai women. These located
21 See for example, PakFoods Public Company Ltd, Palifoods Interactive Marketing CD (Bangkok: Pakfoods Public Company Limited); Phillips Foods Inc., Crabmeat Quality Brochure (Phillips Foods Inc., 2005): available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/index.cfm?fa=iPa.page&page_id=54&site _id=2 (accessed 3 February 2006). 284 imported crabmeat primarily in high-tech, processing plants and laboratories, further emphasizing the science of quality as the cornerstone of the industrial convention.
Importers also used HACCP's traceability system as a product guarantee, offering refunds on crabmeat rejected by chefs and distributors for any quality control problem. 22
This made the product seem risk free by diverting risk and costs back to the suppliers in
Thailand who absorbed the losses for rejected crabmeat. HACCP was an effective marketing tool between 1992 and 1997, as the seafood scares increased in the United
States, and the FDA had not made HACCP mandatory for the domestic seafood industry.23 Phillips and the other crabmeat importers emphasized this in their early marketing strategies, but after HACCP became mandatory in 1997 they focused on the differences in the HACCP systems. Marketing materials and cuttings highlighted the importers' ability to trace crabmeat back to the fishermen and their use of third party audits, in-house labs, and private corporate standards, all of which exceeded the FDA regulation while pointing out that the domestic industry met the minimum HACCP standards required by the federal government. This further differentiated the market and shifted the Mid-Atlantic customers toward imported, pasteurized crabmeat, as I will discuss in Chapter Eight. Crabmeat importers began to expand their markets in 1997 through wholesalers and new products.
22 Investigation No. TA-20I-7I: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission.
23 Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 285
Coast to Coast
Importers knew that chefs were the key actors in the distribution network. Bob
Stryker of Ocean Technology revealed that starting with them opened up new distribution channels and markets:
It's the chef that is going to order the product from the distributor. The distributor is going to order the product from me. But it all stems from the guy in the restaurant, because at that point that's where ninety percent of [crabmeat] was consumed. You get the restaurateur behind the product; the distributor has got to follow.24
Chefs could convince distributors to carry new products like imported pasteurized crabmeat by demanding the product. However, restaurants had historically ordered fresh crabmeat either directly from the packer or from regional wholesalers who specialized in seafood, while national food service distributors, such as Sysco or US Food Service, carried frozen breaded fish portions. Pasteurized crabmeat and targeting chefs led to a change in distribution channels in 1998.
As chefs began to request imported pasteurized crabmeat from national distributors, these companies began to carry pasteurized crabmeat. Importers often assigned a sales person to that distributor for several weeks to educate the distributor's sales force in the benefits of the product not only for restaurants, but also for other institutional food service establishments such as cafeterias.25 Broad'.'"line food service distributors came to realize the benefits of pasteurization in terms of industrial quality
24 Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
25 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission. 286 and safety: long shelf-life; year round availability; national distribution of crabmeat; stable prices; and elimination of most bacteria. Imported pasteurized crabmeat also met these distributors' new purchasing structure.
As discussed in Chapter Two, the growth of multi-unit regional and national chain restaurants throughout the 1980s had led Sysco and US Food Service to begin programmed sales in which national accounts dealt with a single sales person, but also sourced from a single supplier. 26 By the 1990s, many regional seafood restaurants began to expand into national chains as well, and started using the programmed sales of national distributors. 27 For example, Landry's Seafood Restaurants Group had twenty-four seafood restaurants in 1994 concentrated in the Southeast, including Joe's Crab Shack which both served blue crab dishes. By 1999, Landry's had expanded to 194 restaurants throughout the Southeast, Gulf Coast, and Midwest and Joe's Crab Shack featured
Maryland crab cakes made by mixing the imported crabmeat with small amounts of fresh domestic crabmeat. More significantly, however, General Mills spun off its subsidiary restaurants into a conglomerate of corporate restaurants in 1995 when Red Lobster, Olive
Garden and the Bahama Breeze chains became Darden Restaurant Group. Darden became (and remains) the largest single seafood purchaser in the world, the Wal-Mart of
26 E. Bruce Geelhoed, The Thrill ofSuccess: the Story ofSYSCO/Frost-Pack Food Services, Incorporated, ed. Sandra Marsh, Ball State University Business History Series vol. 2 (Muncie, IN: Bureau of Business Research, College of Business and Department of History, 1983).
27 Data on restaurants from Nancy Brumback, "What's the Catch: Serving Seafood in Restaurants," Restaurant Business, 15 August 1999; U.S. International Trade Commission, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, L.L.P., Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf ofthe Coalition for the Free Trade ofCrabmeat, Letter ofSupport for the Coalition for the Free Trade ofCrabmeatfrom Landry's Seafood Restaurants Inc., 14 June 2000; Richard Papiernik, "Consolidation is Hot Topic in Race for Market Share," Nation's Restaurant News, 24 February 1997. 287 restaurants.28 By 1999, Sysco and other food service distributors constituted over forty percent of the imported crabmeat distribution channel (See Table 13).29
Table 13. Share of Distribution Sales of Imported Crabmeat, 1995-1999
100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 111 Wholesaler 50% m Restaurants 40% m Retail 30% 20% Iii Food Service 10% 0% 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Source: Data compiled from responses to USITC questionnaire, see United States International Trade Commission. Full Data Report for Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Investigation No. Ta-201-71. Washington DC: United States International Trade Commission, 2000, 11-17.
In addition, more imported crabmeat entered the US market beginning in 1997 as
Byrd International started operations in Southeast Asia quickly followed by Pakfoods, saturating the Mid-Atlantic and southeast market with crabmeat (See Table 14 ). 30 As
Bob Styker remembered, importers began "looking for territories that they could stretch
28 John Wilkinson, "Fish: A Global Value Chain Driven onto the Rocks," Sociologia Ruralis 46, no. 2 (2006).
29 United States International Trade Commission, Full Data Report for Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Investigation No. TA-201-71 (Washington DC: United States International Trade Commission, 2000), 11-16.
30 Ablondi and others, The U.S. Blue Crab Industry (Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999). 288 their legs in which weren't quite as competitive."31 Importers who had established long- term relationships with restaurants such as Landry's saw their products expand nationally as well, "We've got some chains that started out with a handful ofrestaurants and have grown nationwide and taken our product right along with them."32 Imported pasteurized crabmeat entered the Midwest and other markets through the Chef to Chef program and cuttings, introducing crabmeat to chefs and diners who did not have a "blue crab palate" like their counterparts in the Mid-Atlantic.
Table 14. Increasing Levels oflmported Crabmeat, 1994-1999
35,000,000
30,000,000
"C"'c 25,000,000 ::I 0 ....Q. 20,000,000 0 .....,.Global "'c 15,000,000 Landings ~ 10,000,000 :; ...... Landings 5,000,000 in Asia
1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Source: Data from Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. The U.S. Blue Crab Industry. Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999.
Importers had changed the palate of crab connoisseurs on the East Coast by emphasizing the backstage elements of imported pasteurized crabmeat. On the west coast, importers found less resistance to pasteurization in new crabmeat markets because
31 Stryker, Owner, Ocean Technology Inc. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
32 Ibid. 289 restaurant owners and chefs, and especially diners, were less familiar with the taste of blue crabmeat-the domestic quality convention. Although the industrial quality convention remained key aspects of marketing, Bob Stryker remembered, "It took a lot of marketing and kind of force feeding [people] to the point where they've come to the
33 realization, 'Yes that is definitely a delicacy' ." · In making crabmeat the next flavor trend, however, he also suggested that some importers took advantage of this lack of taste connoisseurship and flavor knowledge:
When you get out into the Midwest and the west coast, where they have not had the affiliation with blue crab over the years, I think that's where you're able to substitute and kind of dupe them [on species, flavor]. 34
In these regions, consumers' flavor knowledge started with pasteurized crabmeat rather than fresh, domestically produced crabmeat.
Similarly, major chains such as Red Lobster that were better known for deep fried seafood learned about taste and product development from importers. Alice Oui of
Pakfoods stated that Red Lobster purchased pre-made frozen crab cakes from Pakfoods because the company had supplied them with shrimp for many years. 35 According to
Alice, Pakfoods' corporate chefs developed their Maryland crab cakes by sampling crab cakes at the Boston Seafood Show and experimenting in their corporate kitchens.
However, supplying Red Lobster proved challenging because:
33Ibid.
34 Ibid. By 1996 some crabmeat importers were processing crabmeat in China using red crab, not blue swimming crab.
35 Alice Oui, Vice-President of Marketing, Pakfoods. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 17 May 2006, Bangkok, Thailand. 290
[They] had no center for value added products, so no place to send things, and no chefs to work with that represented the company. So there wasn't anybody to talk to about taste. So we had to learn to be patient and give them advice because sometimes they don't know what they want-you have to tell them what is better quality.36
In this way, crabmeat importers shaped the ideas of taste in chain restaurants and across the nation. By the end of the decade, the value of imported pasteurized crabmeat from
Thailand had increased 124 percent while its volume from Asia had increased 183 percent with Thailand supplying 22 percent of this total (See Table 15).37
Table 15. Volume and Value of Imported Crabmeat from Thailand, 1994-1999
9000000 .. $50.. 00 8000000 ~------...... = ;;; $45,00 -lS 7000000 g § 6000000 -;------·····------·-·------'O $35.00 t" 5000000 . J:ii .~2$.00 l£ 4000000 - sio.oo ~ 3000000 - :ii 2000000 1000000 !) -····· - ·-- 1994 J'l95 19% 1997 l 998 1999 200\l 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 19\.W
Above, left: The volume of Thai crabmeat imports surged starting in 1997 at the start of the financial crisis when companies increased production. Right: the value of Thai crabmeat imports increased from just over $5 million to $35 million dollars between 1994 and 1998. Source: Data from Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. The US. Blue Crab Industry. Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999.
Most importers continued to offer a single product-canned, pasteurized crabmeat, albeit differentiated by grades and proprietary blends-and also packed private label brands for Sysco and US Foodservice. Originally, Phillips had wanted to create
361bid.
37 Ablondi and others, The U.S. Blue Crab Industry. 291 pre-made frozen crab cakes, crabmeat entrees, and appetizers for the restaurant and food service industry and by the mid 1990s they began selling those products. Phillips, however, had the advantage of marketing their products through their front stage image of family and Chesapeake heritage.
Marketing the Legend of Phillips
Phillips had long used its family history on the Chesapeake to market their restaurants' quality and authenticity. When the company launched its pre-made frozen
Maryland crab cakes they used this front stage image and linked this image with their own history as a restaurateur to establish their expertise for making products for other restaurants. In other words, Phillips branded Maryland crab cakes, Chesapeake heritage, and forty years in the seafood restaurant industry with the Phillips logo and family history.38 This front stage image supported Maryland's economic redevelopment plans as nationalized Maryland crab cakes became part of the commodification and export of
Eastern Shore culture.
As outlined in Chapter Four, the restaurants had long-marketed themselves and their Maryland crab cakes as "the taste of tradition of the Chesapeake," through a family narrative that combined two tales-one old and one new. 39 The older tale linked the family history of four generations of men working the Chesapeake as watermen, schooner captains, and crabmeat processors to the folk image of fishing communities as
38 I am grateful to Joel Rogers for pointing this out to me. Joel Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 14 August 2004, Washington DC.
39 This phrase appears on Phillips' packaging for frozen crab cakes and on their menus starting in the late 1990s. 292 relics of the past and older values.40 The narrative firmly located the company in
Chesapeake heritage and steeped the company in authenticity, but it also established their credentials and expertise in crabmeat processing and connected them to Maryland's reputation as a seafood state.
The new narrative merged the image of watermen as rugged individualists exercising their rights to free enterprise with the building of Phillips' restaurant chain and revitalizing Maryland's economy through waterfront redevelopment and heritage tourism. This narrative endowed the corporate side of Phillips with the folk values of the
Bay as it emphasized and merged tradition, history, innovation and entrepreneurialism simultaneously.
The result was the "Legend of Phillips"-a story that figured prominently in the front stage image of the company's new pre-made products.41 Family narratives appeared on the company's website and marketing brochures for the food service industry, and company representatives retold these stories with precision for the media during interviews and in corporate videos. A featured narrative on menus and marketing materials described how the mass produced Maryland crab cakes are made from the same family recipes used in the restaurants. These family recipes originated on Hooper's
4°For thorough discussions of this image see George C. Carey, "Watermen: Culture Heroes in Workboats," in Working the Water: The Commercial Fisheries ofMaryland's Patuxent River, ed. Paula Johnson (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988); David Griffith, Estuary's Gift: an Atlantic Coast Cultural Biography (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 1999).
41 See for example, Phillips Foods Inc., "The Legend of Phillips," available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/html/legend.html, (accessed 11 October 2004). This story continued to be retold and expanded in many trade and other magazines, see Ellen Uzelac, "Windjammer," Baltimore SmartCEO.com, (2004), available from http://smartceo.com/files/issues/Sept%2004.pdf (accessed 11 October 2005). 293
Island with Shirley and Steve's mothers, as I detailed in Chapter Four, and represented local foodways that had made Phillips restaurants into cultural destinations. As destinations, the restaurants represented an authentic Chesapeake experience for tourists that added value through ideas of localness, history, and uniqueness. The company emphasized this authenticity in marketing their "heat and eat" crabmeat products. This ironically lent an heir of traceability and product identity in the form of family genealogy to the brand. However, these recipes now became the nationalized taste of Maryland and
Chesapeake heritage negating the many regional Maryland crab cakes found on the
Eastern Shore.
In order to produce the value added products for restaurants, Phillips established a manufacturing plant in Baltimore capable of producing 200,000 crab cakes a day and one thousand gallons of crab soup.42 Despite this industrial setting, Phillips' crab cakes are marketed as hand-picked and hand-made even though the crabmeat is hand-picked in
Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. In emphasizing these elements of the domestic quality convention, Phillips connects their crab cake production to the occupational heritage of the Chesapeake while also giving their products a sense of artisanal production. Restaurants menued Phillips' crab cakes as "Maryland crab cakes", and consumers no longer had to travel to the Chesapeake, but could consume Maryland
42Nancy Kercheval, "Phillips Foods Relocates; Ups Crab Cakes Output," The Baltimore Daily Record, 2002, available from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4183/is _ 20020404/ai_n1004996 l, (accessed 8 March 2008). The crab cakes are flash frozen. 294 and Eastern Shore culture anywhere in the nation through a frozen, pre-made crab cake using crabmeat from Southeast Asia.43
Phillips' Chef to Chef program was part of a larger message that positioned the company as fellow restaurateurs and businessmen who knew the difficulties of the restaurant business. This message was used widely after 1996 to establish a sense of authenticity for their restaurant experiences connected to their prepared crab cakes. At the time, restaurants faced labor shortages and higher food costs, and the message emphasized that, as restaurant owners, Phillips knew "what is important to foodservice establishments"-year round availability and ready to cook products with no wasted ingredients that also saved time and labor costs.44 But the message also built on Phillips heritage-based menu as a way to attract diners because the name "Phillips" symbolized
Chesapeake flavors, "Order off our menu and we'll show you how to make money, save labor and add dollars to your bottom line while you savor the flavor of Phillips."45
However, supplying a variety of restaurant concepts across the nation with premade, frozen crab products introduced aspects of a market quality convention in which quality is more reliant on price. Phillips had to create appetizers, soups, crab cakes and other entrees to meet the price range and demands of different restaurants and their target consumers. The crab cake pricing sheets and other marketing materials shows that
43 Phillips' menus and supermarket retail boxes actually contain the phrase "Serving the f"mest seafood in the mid-Atlantic region from the tropical waters of S.E. Asia" in small print.
44 Phillips Foods Inc., Crab Cakes and Crab Minis Sale Sheet (Phillips Foods Inc., 2005): available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/index.cfm?fa=iPa.page&page_id=54&site _id=2 (accessed 3 February 2006).
45 Ibid.( accessed.). 295
Phillips achieved these price differentiations by using lower grades of crabmeat and reducing the amount of crabmeat the product contained. In addition, the pasteurization process allowed companies to stock large inventories, which stabilized prices because imported crabmeat was no longer dependent on fluctuating harvest levels and prices.
Higher priced products, such as the "Premium crab cake," came to represent the restaurant quality crab cake made with backfin or lump meat and little filler. Restaurants purchased the Premium Cakes at $5.40 per portion cost and menued them starting at
$15.00 each. Cheaper crab cakes were made from the special grade of crabmeat, which by 1995 resembled the hockey puck of the 1960s encased in breading with lower grades of crabmeat, and wholesaled for $1. 72 each. 46
Not only did Phillips and the other importers have to meet a variety of price points for restaurants, they also had to meet the bulk pricing and programmed sales of distributors. Importers profit margins on frozen prepared crab cakes and lower grades of crabmeat made them part of rebates and tie-ins that allowed high volume customers to buy at five to six percent discount.47 Lloyd Byrd described what this meant for companies:
When you start taking your crabmeat and putting it in crab cakes and crab nuggets you have to look at marketing plans and the number of buy-one get-ones you have to do a year and all kinds of stuff. I never could figure out at a retail level when we were making money. It seems like you are using a lot of product but you always
46 All pricing information on Phillips' crab cakes is from Phillips Foods Inc., Crab Cake Menu Pricing Sheet (Phillips Foods Inc., 2005): available from http://www.phillipsfoods.com/index.cfm?fa=iPa.page&page_id=54&site _id=2 (accessed 3 February 2006).
47 Investigation No. TA-20I-7 I: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 56. 296
had to work on a deal and they always stepped up and bought heavily when the deal was offered but the deal might at best break even. 48
The jumbo and colossal jumbo lump grades remained gourmet items for sale as canned crabmeat primarily to restaurants and their prices remained as high as or higher than domestic crabmeat. However, Phillips and Byrd had begun to pack private label crabmeat for Sysco and US Foodservice, which Lloyd explained required more programmed sales:
You have to participate in this program and that program, and give them fifty cents a pound for sales promotions, so it's quite expensive. But the salesman goes out and says crabmeat is so much per case and underneath their brand name it will say the packer's brand.49
Private label brands are much cheaper than nationally branded products. In this way, restaurants and other food service institutions could knowingly buy Phillips or Byrd crabmeat at reduced prices, even for jumbo lump crabmeat.
By 1998, trade magazines such as Restaurants and Institutions and Restaurant
News named crab cakes the fourth leading seller on seafood menus across the country, making them the latest food trend and solidifying their position as an authenticity niche. 50
Over the decade, Phillips and the other crabmeat importers changed the palates of chefs from a culture of taste to the science of quality in which chefs and distributors demanded a long shelf-life, no shell fragments, full traceability, and year-round, consistent products
48 Byrd, Former Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded.
49 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflnternational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 3 January 2007, Berlin, MD.
50 On the popularity of crab cakes, see Marcel Desaulneirs, "Jumbo Lump Crab Cakes," Restaurants and Institutions 1995. See also Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 187. 297 as the main quality attributes. In doing so, Phillips and Byrd had also increased the amount of power and influence they held in the state of Maryland. By selling the image of place and tradition, the companies made state heritage and crab cakes a primary export for Maryland, changing their meaning from local food to economic development model.
Phillips Foods, and Steve Phillips in particular, were heralded as an innovative company and entrepreneur, reinforcing the Phillips legend. However, this narrative of entrepreneurialism disconnected Phillips and all-you-can-eat development from the over exploitation of blue crab stocks, and obscured the role of importers in dispossessing the
Chesapeake and other domestic crabmeat packers of their markets, the subject of our next chapter.
Summary
The arrival of imported pasteurized crabmeat in the United States set into relief two competing, but dialogic quality conventions. On the one hand, the Chesapeake quality convention centered on the taste of fresh crabmeat and had emerged from conflicting state sanitation regulations, individual customer preferences, and long standing trust relationships between processors and customers. This convention produced the restaurant quality crab cake and together had come to symbolize the authenticity of the Chesapeake crabmeat industry because of the persistence of production practices that seemed pre-industrial. On the other hand, the industrial quality convention of imported crabmeat centered on product consistency, year round availability, high volumes, and the science of quality symbolized by HACCP. 298
Imported crabmeat companies, however, were able to make restaurant quality crab cakes by combining both of these quality conventions. More importantly, they marketed themselves and their products as authenticity niche foods by evoking both nostalgia and modernity. Phillips and other importers used this front and backstage image to first capture the market held by Chesapeake crabmeat companies and then expand their brands nationwide as regional seafood restaurants expanded nationally. In this way, the companies created a demand for pasteurized crabmeat by redefining seafood quality within an industrial convention, but one that allowed restaurants to make seafood that looked fresh off the boat and to create their own specialty packs. However, part of this demand was also for place. Mass marketed crab cakes made from imported crabmeat reinforced the branding and marketing of the Chesapeake and therefore expanded
Maryland's economic redevelopment opportunities nationwide. The Legend of Phillips and the name Maryland linked the food to Chesapeake heritage, making the company even more important in Maryland's economic redevelopment plans. However, this also increased the value of the Bay as a heritage object along with its fishing communities.
Simultaneously, Phillips and Byrd started their marketing activities by taking over the regional market held by the Chesapeake companies. In the next chapter, I analyze the consequences of these marketing strategies for the Chesapeake crabmeat packers as they intersected with the 1995 stock collapse as well as the start of HACCP for the domestic industry. CHAPTERS
CONSUMING THE CHESAPEAKE
Maybe in our affluence we will decide it is worthwhile to memorialize the waterman in a sort of colonial Williamsburg on the Bay-Waterman's World, we could call it.
Tom Horton, Bay Country
In 1994 the Maryland Sea Grant Program published a study on the blue swimming crab industry in Asia. 1 Researchers wanted to determine the potential impact of imported pasteurized crabmeat on the Chesapeake industry, and concluded that imported crabmeat posed no imminent threat. However, Jack Brooks explains that by
1997 domestic packers considered imported crabmeat their greatest threat:
There was a summer [when] crabs were good and we were generating a lot of crabmeat, and then we just couldn't sell any. A lot of our traditional customers just said, 'No, I'm okay' or 'I'm not doing much business.' It was very uncharacteristic for that time of year. That's probably the first indicator right there. Then I think it was about 1997 that things started really getting hard to sell and we started to see more imported crabmeat coming in from places like Thailand.2
1 Field research for this study was carried out in 1992 in China, Thailand, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. At the time, none of these countries were packing for Phillips. Furthermore, the study concentrated on harvesting technologies and did not examine EOI strategies, relationships and network coordination, quality, and governance at the processing end. See Charles Petrocci and Doug Lipton, The Warm Water Crab Fishery in Asia: Implications for the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Industry (College Park, MD: Maryland Sea Grant Extension Program, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University ofMaryland, 1994).
2 Jack Brooks, Bill Brooks, and Joe Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 11 January 2006, Cambridge, MD.
299 300
Although the industry had been "popping" as Bill described earlier, Clayton's sales books show that the company started losing customers long before 1997. Customers such as M
& I Seafood in Baltimore bought crabmeat from several packers in the region to produce their Chesapeake Bay Gourmet crab cakes for mail order through the Quality Value
Convenience (QVC) shopping network on television.3 Looking at the sales record, Bill
Brooks states "We sold M & I a lot of stuff starting in 1983 and then '93 was the last year we sold him any product."4 According to the records, J.M. Clayton's peak year in sales to M & I was 1990 when they sold a total of 70,000 pounds of crabmeat to the company, but each year after that the amount decreased until 1994 when the total is zero.
Eventually, M & I told Jack the company had switched to imported crabmeat, "They said it didn't taste as good, but it was cheaper and it didn't have any shells."5
Starting in 1995 the Chesapeake and other US crabmeat packers had to contend with a series of challenges that together formed a web of accumulation by dispossession.
This included the first signs of stock collapse, surging imports, loss of market share, and mandatory HACCP implementation. But another form of dispossession was also taking place connected to the revaluation of the Chesapeake's shorelines and the image of traditional culture portrayed by watermen and seafood packers. In Thailand, the state and companies used HACCP to capture and revalue the natural resource and control the behavior of suppliers in the network, creating an industrial quality convention and a
NTC. However, the revaluation process in the Chesapeake located value in the image of
3 Today most ofM & I's sales are through their website and large chain grocery stores like Super Giant. But you can still buy their Maryland crab cakes on QVC during the Christmas holidays.
4 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault.
5 Ibid. 301
the Chesapeake as a unique and isolated place and its fishing communities as traditional and pre-industrial. In this context, the Chesapeake's domestic quality convention added value through essentialized notions of tradition and authenticity. However, the industry had increased production and added pasteurization facilities beginning in the mid 1980s, as outlined in Chapter Four. This chapter first examines the stock collapse of 1995 and then the loss of market share for the Chesapeake crabmeat industry. I connect these processes to the marketing strategies of Phillips and other importers discussed in the previous chapter, but also to the continued coastal development along the Chesapeake's shores, the topic of the second part of this chapter.
Stocks and Markets
As described in Chapter Four, the Chesapeake's historically high crab harvests during the 1980s and early 1990s had been supported by relaxed harvesting regulations in both Maryland and Virginia in order to expand Maryland's best export-the Maryland crab cake. In 1995, the blue crab stock of the Chesapeake Bay began to show the first signs of collapse after fifteen years of intense harvesting for all-you-can-eat buffets.
Once again, female crabs were the center of debate and, as they had in 1920, Maryland and Virginia argued over who was to blame and how to address the problem.
The 1995 annual Bay crab stock assessment report indicated a thirty-four percent decline in the population of adult crabs, especially female crabs. 6 Female crabs had
6 Data on the stock assessment from Merrill Leffler, "Blue Crabs: the Biology of Abundance," Maryland Marine Notes Online, (1996), available from http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/MarineNotes/May June96/index.php (accessed 31January2006); L. J. Rugolo, K.S. Knotts, and A.M. Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery," Journal ofShellfish Research 17, no. 2 (1998). The stock assessment methods and the subsequent reports were highly controversial because biologists still did not have enough knowledge about the biology and population dynamics of blue crabs. 302
always been the majority of the harvest during the fall as they migrated southward down the Bay and were the primary target of the winter dredge season in Virginia. However, the high dockside values of the 1980s had increasingly come from the expanding basket trade, but also the export of sponge crabs to Japan and other Asian markets, including those in the United States. 7 Although Maryland outlawed the harvest of sponge crabs in
1989 as a conservation measure, Virginia and states further south continued to profit from exporting these culturally defined delicacies. 8 Despite the regulations, female crabs continued to be the primary resource for crab picking houses which had increased production during the early 1990s after increasing the labor pool through H2B visa workers from Mexico.
Additional data showed that the increasing harvests had been achieved through an increase in fishing effort, including more watermen crabbing and more gear in the Bay, especially crab pots.9 Maryland had exacerbated this gold rush for crabs by enacting a moratorium on striped bass fishing in the 1980s, pushing more commercial watermen into crabbing while the number of crab pots increased twenty-five percent between 1980 and 1995 .10 Watermen recalled that "In the whole Bay you couldn't a drowned if you fell
7Rugolo, Knotts, and Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery."
8 This law did not outlaw the harvest of female crabs, only those bearing eggs. See Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking ofBlue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 (DNR Online, 1999): available from http://mddm.chesapeakebay.net/mdcomfish/crab/CRABREGREV3 .htm (accessed 31 January 2006).
9 See especially, Rugolo, Knotts, and Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery."
10 Ibid. 303
over [board], you would have been on a crab pot; you could walk home on crab pots."11
This increased effort meant the amount of crabs harvested remained stable in the Bay, but the size of the individual crabs harvested began to decrease.
Thus watermen were working harder and spending more effort to catch the same amount of crabs, which were smaller in size. This combined with the decline in biomass for female crabs indicated that the blue crab stock was not able to reproduce itself at a sustainable level. In fisheries economics terms, the blue crab fishery had exceeded its maximum sustainable yield (MSY) and had decreased its catch per unit effort (CPUE).
Biologists with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) estimated that the blue crab fishery in the Bay had actually reached its MSY in the late 1980s, meaning that by 1995 the fishery was overexploited and in crisis.12
In August of 1995 Maryland enacted emergency crab harvesting regulations that took effect in September (after the summer tourist season). 13 Maryland closed commercial crabbing on Sundays south of the Bay Bridge and on Mondays north of the
Bay Bridge, which launched a regatta of commercial crab boats traveling up and down the Bay on Sundays and Mondays. 14 The state also limited the crabbing hours from six in the morning to two in the afternoon and closed the crabbing season early on November
19th until March 31, 1996. Both Maryland and Virginia limited the number of
11 Sam Swift from Ernie Bowden and Sam Swift, Watermen. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 19 January 1998, Tape number MAAFIKFNA/FT/1.19.303 and 304, transcript, Dehnarva Folklife Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Chincoteague, VA.
12 Rugolo, Knotts, and Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery."
13 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking of Blue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 (accessed.).
14 Bowden and Swift, Watermen. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 304
commercial crabbing licenses issued in order to make blue crabs a limited access fishery and decrease the number of watermen. To maintain their license, watermen had to be active commercial fishermen, which Ernie Bowden acknowledged meant crabbing when crabs were scarce:
If you have a license you have to go out every so many days or you lose it. I went one hundred and seventy-eight dollars in the hole last year dredging crabs when they weren't around just to keep my license. 15
In contrast to Maryland, Virginia's Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) claimed that the crab sanctuaries they created in 1994 and the limit of 800 crab pots per vessel were enough to conserve the stock and kept the winter dredge season open. 16
After the Chesapeake blue crab stocks began to show signs of collapse in 1995, local media and seafood trade magazines praised Phillips for anticipating the over exploitation of the Chesapeake blue crab resource and solving the problem by going offshore.17 Phillips' original reason for going offshore-too much competition for the crab resource-was reframed as a scarcity of crabs in the Chesapeake and disconnected the phenomenal harvest levels of the 1980s with the over expansion of the company's restaurants and the state's all-you-can-eat redevelopment during that decade. This narrative of anticipating a scarcity and sourcing from places of abundance also disconnected the company and other importers from the declining market share of the
Chesapeake crabmeat packers.
15 Ernie Bowden from Ibid.
16 Leffler, "Blue Crabs: the Biology of Abundance," (accessed.).
17 See for example, Fiona Robinson, "Phillips Foods Solves Crab Supply Problem In House," Seafood Star, 2000, available from http://www.seafoodbusiness.com/archives/searchframe.asp (accessed 14 April 2003). 305
Table 16. Dockside Prices for Domestic Hard Crabs, 1990-2000
$1.20
.."' $LOO ...... ,.National .!ll Dockside i8 $0.80 Price .!: _.,.Chesapeak .... Source: Data from U.S. Department of Commerce. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. National Marine Fisheries Service. Blue Crab: Hard Crab Landings, 1950-2006. Silver Spring, MD: Fisheries Statistics Division, n.d. Available from http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/st 1/commercial/landings/annual_ landings.html (accessed 11 March 2007). Domestically, the dockside price of crabs continued to climb after 1995 and the Maryland and Chesapeake prices exceeded the national average (See Table 16). In the past, crabmeat packers had been able to pass on the increased costs of crabs to customers by raising the price of crabmeat. 18 By 1997, domestic packers could no longer afford to pay these high dockside prices for crabs because they could not sell the crabmeat at higher prices-a new pricing structure had emerged. Prices for imported crabmeat remained stable due to pasteurization, the ability to transfer these costs back to suppliers 18 Knowledge on pricing and market changes from Ablondi and others, The US. Blue Crab Industry (Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999); Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault; Tim Howard, Retired owner, Maryland Crabmeat Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 1 January 1999, Tape number OH118, transcript, Crab Pickers' Oral History Project Collection Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Crisfield, MD; U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U S. International Trade Commission, 15 June 2000; J. C. Tolley, Retired Owner, Meredith and Meredith. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 30 January 2006, Wingate, MD. 306 Table 17. Domestic Crabmeat Production Levels, 1995-1998 16,000,000 14,000,000 12,000,000 ,e National .E"' 10,,000,000 Production c: -i!l!-Tota1 .2...... 8,000,000 Maryland ~ 6,000,000 Production ~...... -.-rota! North Q. 4,000,000 Carolina Production 2,000,000 0 1995 1996 1997 1998 Source: Data from Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. The US. Blue Crab Industry. Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999. Table 18. Domestic Hard Crab Values, 1990-2000 ..."' $180,00 El $160,00 8 $140,00 15 -+-National le $120,00 Value ,g $100,00 .....,._ Chesapeak ~ $80,00 eValue $60.00 ~~Maryland $40,00 Value $20,00 $- Source: Data from National Marine Fisheries Service. Chesapeake Hard Crab Landings, 1950-2006, Fisheries Statistics Division, Silver Spring, Md. http://www.st.nmfs.noaa.gov/stl/commercial/landings/annual_landings.html and subsidiaries in Thailand, and the fact that importers averaged those costs across production sites to obtain a single price and overall high margins. This, together with the discount schemes required by distributors, often meant that the price of imported 307 crabmeat was lower than domestic crabmeat. This produced two immediate impacts for Chesapeake packers. First, crab packers had an oversupply of fresh crabmeat, a highly perishable product. Second, watermen could no longer count on crab packers to buy their crabs and voluntarily decreased their level of harvests, creating additional supply limitations beyond the 1995 stock collapse. However, despite the conditions of scarcity, the price of pasteurized domestic backfm crabmeat decreased sixteen percent and the average price for fresh domestic crabmeat decreased twelve percent between 1995 and 1999. 19 As a result, production levels for picked crabmeat dropped and the value of blue crab landings leveled out and began to decline in the latter part of the decade (See Tables 17 and 18). As discussed in Chapter Four, larger packers had increased their production level of pasteurized crabmeat throughout the early 1990s, but the oversupply of fresh crabmeat at the end of the decade made pasteurizing a necessity. However, the new price structure also applied to domestic pasteurized crabmeat, which had seen its price decline two dollars between 1985 and 1999.20 Not only had the profit margins declined, but according to the packers by the late 1990s banks would no longer make loans to them to finance holding the inventory "Because we can't make our money back by holding it until the winter when the price would usually go up; the margins in winter are no longer there."21 This forced the domestic packers to compete on the fresh market through wholesalers, who sell fresh seafood on consignment and may or may not sell seafood as a 19 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 43-44. 20 Ibid., 107. 21 Ibid., 29. 308 branded commodity. By the end of the decade, the domestic crabmeat industry lost the food service distributors and markets they had gained during the early 1990s (See Table 19).22 More significantly, they lost thirty percent of their market share while imported crabmeat gained thirty percent and the value of fresh crabmeat plummeted against the imported product (See Table 20 and 21 ). This economic data, however, is not just about supply and demand, but shows in financial terms a cultural shift in the definition of quality for crabmeat. As domestic packers contended with declining stocks and vanishing markets, they also had to begin implementing HACCP as the FDA regulation took effect in 1997. Table 19. Changes in Distribution Channels for Domestic Crabmeat, 1995-1999 100S'!(, 90% 80% 70% 60% 111 Wholesaler 50% !II Restaurants 40% re Retail 30% !II Food Service 20% 10% 0% 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 Source: Data from United States International Trade Commission. Full Data Report for Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Investigation No. Ta-201-71. Washington DC: United States International Trade Commission, 2000. 22Ibid., 51. 309 Table 20. Changes in Market Share for Domestic and Imported Crabmeat, 1993-1998 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% :w Imports Market Share 40% 1111. Domestic Market Share 30% 20% 10% 0% 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 Source: Data from National Marine Fisheries Services, reported in Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. The U.S. Blue Crab Industry. Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999. Table 21. Changes in Value for Domestic and Imported Crabmeat, 1994-2002 $160,000,000.00 $140,000,000.00 $120,000,000.00 """""=---~·-·-·w·--~---"-c:J'K'L- ...... ,.Value of Domestic $100,000,000.00 Crab meat $80,000,000.00 ., ...... ,, ...... -m-·Value of Imported $60,000,000.00 Crabmeat $40,000,000.00 $20,000,000.00 s- 19941995 19961997 1998 2000 2001 2002 Source: Data from National Marine Fisheries Services, reported in Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. The U.S. Blue Crab Industry. Washingtion DC: Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., 1999. 310 HACCP in the Chesapeake When I asked Jack Brooks, "What has HACCP cost you so far?" he replied, "Lots of grey hairs!"23 Domestic crabmeat packers began HACCP training in November of 1996 to meet the 1997 deadline set by the FDA, but my research shows that implementing HACCP in Thailand and the United States created substantially different versions because of how each state understood the purpose ofHACCP. In addition, as I mentioned in previous chapters, most of the import companies had been exposed to HACCP for several years prior to the FDA mandate. On the one hand, many importing companies, such as Seawatch and Handy International, had been operating under a HACCP system since the mid 1980s while Thailand had begun training in 1991, and Phillips, Byrd, and Pakfoods had worked with the Thai state to establish HACCP plans for crabmeat starting in 1996.24 Thailand viewed HACCP as part of economic growth strategies to create its Kitchen of the World development plan-increase exports by creating a standardized seafood industry. The Thai state provided investment incentives, such as tax breaks, to Thai and foreign companies and had subsidized the HACCP costs of these companies and their mini plants. Phillips and the other companies had developed critical control points that exceeded the FDA requirements in microbiological standards and in traceability. This 23 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 24 Norman Whittington III, Director oflntemational Operations, Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 28 October 2005, Berlin, MD. See also Carol Haltaman, "Industry Considerations in HACCP Program Implementation," in Fish Inspection, Quality Control and HACCP: a Global Focus, ed. Roy E. Martin, Collette Robert L., and Slavin Joseph W. (Arlington, VA: Techomic, 1997); S. Suwanrangsi, "HACCP Implementation in the Thai Fisheries Industry," in Making the Most ofHA CCP: Learningfrom Other's Experience, ed. Tony Mayes and Sara Mortimore (Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing, 2001). Handy had been exporting soft crabs to Japan throughout the 1980s and received their HACCP certification in 1993. 311 state-supported form ofHACCP gained control of the resource and people's behavior by transferring risk back to fishermen and suppliers through rejected crabmeat. On the other hand, HACCP, as implemented in the United States and Maryland, did not gain the same level of control over the social and environmental relationships as their Thai counterparts. At the national level, the FDA only required traceability systems to go back as far as the initial processor-the crabmeat factory-because the agency held no authority over fishermen and their boats.25 HACCP plans in Maryland did not include the practices of watermen as potential hazards nor did they include CCPs such as keeping the crabs alive between the point of harvest and the processing factory. Maryland crabmeat packers could not trace a can of crabmeat back to the individual waterman even though their production chain was much shorter than the global chain of imported crabmeat. 26 At the state level, the Maryland State Health Department (and many packers) continued to cling to the existing values-based approaches to seafood safety and made HACCP fit within the existing regulations. As discussed in Chapter Three, the 1957 Maryland Health Department regulations required crabmeat to be packed directly into the can and then sealed, even for pasteurized crabmeat. These regulations had created the high shell counts that restaurants came to view as a labor cost, not a sign of quality. However, under HACCP crabmeat companies could repick crabmeat as long as 25 U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, US. Senate: Food Safety: Federal Oversight ofSeafood Does Not Sufficiently Protect Consumers. (Washington DC, 2001). 26 Packers could trace a can of crabmeat to an individual crab picker through a numbering system developed and implemented in 1955 with the crabmeat sanitation codes discussed in Chapter Three. 312 companies identified the CCPs to prevent the potential hazards, and monitored the limits and kept accurate records. In Thailand pasteurization acted as a CCP to the extensive shell removal process that included black light rooms. In contrast, the Maryland Health Department refused to allow packers to adjust their production processes and fully adopt HACCP.27 As a result, shell fragments continued to be a major quality problem for Maryland packers even under mandatory HACCP compliance and allowed import companies to make distinctions about safety and quality in their marketing campaigns. Implementing HACCP was estimated to cost $23,000 the first year and federal and international studies indicated "small plants would suffer a greater impact than larger ones" because they would bear the greatest share of profit loss due to implementation costs from upgrades, administration, and new equipment. 28 Joe Brooks jokingly tagged the new temperature monitoring equipment at J.M. Clayton with the note "this cost $6,000 for HACCP." Maryland and other domestic packers did not view HACCP as adding value to their products but rather as way for the federal government to "close you up'', "nail our butts to the wall" and "eliminate all small seafood processors in the United States."29 Most domestic crabmeat processors viewed HACCP as another way to 27 The Maryland Department of Health did not reverse this regulation until 2002. See Erin Butler, Mazy land Department of Health. Interview by Kelly F eltault, phone interview, 11 October 2006; Title 10 Department ofHealth and Mental Hygiene, Code ofMaryland,, Subtitle 15 Food Chapter 2 Crab Meat, (2002). 28 James Cato, Seafood Safety: Economics ofHazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Programmes. Fisheries Technical Paper 381 (UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 1998): available from www.fao.org/docrep/003/x0465EOO.HTM#contents (accessed 16 September 2006). 29 U.S. International Trade Commission, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, L.L.P., Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crabmeat.from Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf of the Coalition for the Free Trade ofCrabmeat, Exhibit 13: National Blue Crab Industry Association Survey ofBlue Crab Processors, 1995, 12 June 2000. 313 increase the growing consolidation of the seafood industry. The state of Maryland also did not conceptualize HACCP as adding value to its heritage industry and did not invest in added cold storage facilities, laboratory facilities, or increase its inspection and auditing of crabmeat. Chesapeake crabmeat factories continued to have microbiological and other samples taken once every three to four weeks compared to the daily lab tests conducted on imported crabmeat. This increased testing raises questions about labor costs. Later research on HACCP showed that the greatest cost comes from maintaining the system not the start-up costs.30 In Thailand, Pakfoods, Phillips, and Byrd could afford to hire dedicated HACCP teams comprised of young food scientists with two or four year college degrees to monitor CCPs and supervise record keeping procedures. Their suppliers had received HACCP training and support to hire enough staff to create quality control teams. In contrast, US domestic crabmeat processors did not have dedicated quality control teams and relied instead on current staff who became HACCP team members, taking on additional tasks for monitoring and record keeping.31 Evaluations of HACCP implementation by domestic seafood companies pointed out that the FDA had over-estimated the education level and ability of US seafood workers to comprehend the science in HACCP and thus most of the domestic industry was not in compliance by 30 Tihnan Altenburg, "Governance Patterns in Value Chains and their Development Impact," The European Journal ofDevelopment Research 18, no. 4 (2006); John Humphrey, "Policy Implications of Trends in Agribusiness Value Chains," The European Journal ofDevelopment Research 18, no. 4 (2006). 31 This discussion runs through interviews between 1997 and 2001, but see Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 314 2001.32 Many of the domestic packers and newspaper articles on the declining industry attributed the lower prices for imported crabmeat to the lower labor costs for crab pickers in developing countries. This short-sightedness obscures the other discounted labor- food technicians and scientists who implemented HACCP on a daily basis in Thailand. Like crab pickers, this labor force was largely female and points to the possibility of the feminization of scientific knowledge and labor in the seafood industry overseas. Waterman's World For Maryland packers, the surge in imported crabmeat was a threat to their livelihood and they reflected that importers had "taken over our technology of pasteurization and turned it against us."33 Regional newspapers lamented "A Way of Life Endangered" and valorized the traditions of the industry (its quality convention) and its primary symbol: the independent waterman.34 However, this narrative of nostalgia lamented the loss of local traditions, not so much for the watermen but for the residential tourists living along the Bay's shores. The result was a merger of narratives between the declining health of the Bay and watermen's fate that framed both as one natural resource as Tom Horton had predicted almost ten years earlier: At no point in the bay's history have watermen been more valued-or more endangered. They fascinate us moderns in ways perhaps similar to any big predatory animal that embodies wildness ... by roaming free. We have made his 32 U. S. General Accounting Office, Report to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, US. Senate: Food Safety: Federal Oversight ofSeafood Does Not Sufficiently Protect Consumers. 33 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U S. International Trade Commission, 49. 34 Bob Dart, "A Way of Life Endangered: Cheap Crabs from Asia are Crippling an Industry that Spans the Entire Southern Coast," The Atlanta Constitution, 24 October 1999. 315 preservation a prime objective of an unprecedented drive to restore health to the bay's waters and also have portrayed him as an unconscionable over harvester of increasingly scarce fish and oysters. We want him to remain a perfectly ferocious free ranging natural animal, but also please to go easier on eating the deer. But top predators in nature simply need more space and resources to be themselves than we can afford them outside of the remaining wilderness, backcountry and jungles. It is why we have zoos.35 Virginia waterman Ernie Bowden speculated on the type of zoo that would be built, "Oh, no doubt one day I will be stuffed and in a museum."36 The arrival of imported crabmeat set the Chesapeake industry in relief against an industrialized, global product and the state's response was to intensify the invention of tradition and make Eastern Shore culture more precious. The result was that the localism and quaintness of the Chesapeake industry became a cultural resource for the state, which viewed the potential loss of the domestic crabmeat industry as an economic loss based solely on a cultural loss. Framing the industry as a cultural resource led the state to believe that more heritage tourism was needed to save the resource, masking the actual causes of the declining crabmeat industry.37 Similarly, the seafood industry trade magazines framed the Chesapeake industry as inefficient and traditional because of the domestic quality convention. In an editorial for Seafood Business, the Vice-President for Environmental Affairs for Darden restaurants demanded that such a ''traditional industry" seek out niche markets eager to consume "rare" and "gourmet" products-in other words alternative 35 Tom Horton, Bay Country: Reflections on the Chesapeake (New York: Ticknor and Fields, 1989), 189. 36 Bowden and Swift, Watermen. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 37 Jane Nadel-Klein discusses this phenomena in Jane Nadel-Klein, Fishing for Heritage: Modernity and Loss along the Scottish Coast (Oxford: Berg Publishing, 2003). 316 food networks. 38 Once the Chesapeake industry was a cultural resource--an artifact-the dispossession of markets by importers and the revaluation of the Chesapeake and its seafood industries could be overlooked and excused. So too could the restructuring of economic development and class relationships on the Eastern Shore. Here a Dock, There a Dock, Everywhere a Boat Dock Although most of the watermen and crabmeat packers could articulate the effects of redevelopment and tourism on their lives and the Bay, none were as eloquent as Hawkie Melvin. James "Hawkie" Melvin, a seventy-one year old crabber and farmer, grew up along the Wye River on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where his family had lived for six generations (See Figure 31 ). On a breezy day in April 1998, Hawkie, his daughter Judy, and I piled into his truck and drove around the necks and inlets of Perry's Comer and Bennet's Point while Hawke narrated the entire landscape. Hawkie's tour made it clear that commercial watermen were not the only people making a profit by harvesting blue crabs from the Bay. At one point, we stopped at a new wharf plastered with "Keep Out" and "Private Property" signs. Hawkie explained that the new residents on the Shore, who he calls "private people," built docks up and down the coastlines for their own pleasure boats. Hawkie complained that "lots of these private piers took up good crab lays and the places 38 Dick Monroe, "Forget Trade Barriers; Tty Niche Marketing," Seafoodbusiness.com, 1999, available from http://www.seafoodbusiness.com/archives/searchframe.asp (accessed 27 Februaty 2006). 317 where crabs mate."39 To make matters worse, Hawkie pointed out that Maryland state law prohibits commercial fishing within twenty yards of a private dock. I asked Hawkie how this affected his crabbing: "These private docks come so far out into the river we can't crab in most of these rivers anymore, and they've cut down all the trees right to the water so the rivers are silting up. 1140 Ignoring the signs, Hawkie and I walked to the end of the dock and he pointed down the coastline of the Wye River where we stood. Both sides of the Wye were lined with private docks jutting out from new multi-million dollar homes. At the end of every private dock was at least one crab pot dangling in the water. Figure 31. Hawkie Melvin in 1999 on board his crab boat in the Wye River. Notice the mansion in the background in violation of Maryland conservation laws, but with a good view ofHawkie. Source: photo by the author courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, Delmarva Folklife Project. 39 James 'Hawkie' Melvin, Waterman. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 29 April 1999, Tape Number MAAF/KF/MD/FT4.29.99.329-330, transcript, Delmarva Folklife Project, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Collection, Bennet's Point, MD. 40 Ibid. 318 The influx of suburbanites living on the water's edge and tourists had increased the level of recreational crabbing for privatized crab feasts. The high dockside value of blue crabs, however, transformed recreational crabbing into a part-time occupation for many tourists and new residents who sold the crabs to local restaurants even though they did not have a commercial crabbing license. A waterman and his wife described the situation: Our neighbors are office workers in DC and they crab on the weekends with a recreational license, but they sell the crabs to restaurants. They go out and crab, get their two bushels, and then dump the crabs on their dock and go out again. So they are adhering to the state limit on the number of bushels per boat, but there's no limit on the number of trips you make in the day.41 Unfortunately, neither Maryland nor Virginia had systematically collected data on this fishery. Some estimates suggested that recreational crabbing removed the equivalent of eleven percent of the total commercial harvest annually between 1979 and 1994, while others suggest that it represented twenty-five percent of the total commercial harvest as early as 1991.42 These estimates work out to an additional 150 to 350 million pounds of blue crabs landed during this time, and this harvest could be any size of male or female crab. Recreational crabbing is regulated by a different set oflaws (See Table 22). 43 As part of their emergency crab regulations of 1995, Maryland prohibited recreational 41 Colleen and Roy Saddler, Waterman and Wife. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 8 February 1999, Tape number MAAF/KF/MD/FT2.8.99.325, transcript, Delmarva Folklife Project Collection, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum, Sherwood, MD. 42Rugolo et. al estimate 11 % while Horton and Eichbaum have data suggesting 25%. See, Tom Horton and William M. Eichbaum, Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay (Washington DC: Island Press, 1991); Rugolo, Knotts, and Lange, "Historical Profile of the Chesapeake Bay Blue Crab Fishery." 43 Maryland Department of Natural Resources, Lmvs and Regulations Governing the Taking of Blue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998 (accessed.). 319 crabbing Monday to Thursday between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m.. Virginia required recreational crabbers to obtain a license for the first time. However, Maryland's regulations ended in December and in 1999 the state increased the recreational harvest level to three bushels per vessel, the same as it had been between 1979 and 1983. The residential tourists, who once were watermen by proxy of owning waterfront homes, had become part-time watermen but without any of the regulations. Table 22. Maryland Recreational Crabbing Regulations Regulation Emergency Regulations: Recreational crabbing allowed from boats between 5:30am and 5pmonBay 3 bushels per boat for non commercial license Source: Data from Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Laws and Regulations Governing the Taking ofBlue Crabs in Maryland, 1929-1998. DNR Online, 1999, Available from http://mddnr.chesapeakebay.net/mdcomfish/crab/CRABREGREV3.htm (accessed 31January2006). 320 Maryland and Virginia, together with the EPA and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation intensified their efforts to manage the Chesapeake as one ecosystem. 44 However, despite the creation of the Bi-State Blue Crab Advisory Committee in 1996, the political struggle to manage the Chesapeake as a unified ecosystem continued, and actual bi-state management plans remained elusive. Figure 32. Waterfront homes in violation of critical areas law and recreational boaters on the Bay. Source: Photo by the author. These management efforts did not address the cultural and economic revaluing of the resource, especially the Bay's waterfront views or the enclosures taking place on the Chesapeake. When I went crabbing with Hawkie, I had a chance to see the changes to the shoreline from the water. Along the Bay's coasts, the lots for new mansions had been cleared of trees up to the shoreline to create an unobstructed view of the water. These building practices violated Maryland's 1984 Critical Areas Law. Throughout the 1990s real estate developers took advantage of the budget cuts and declining county revenue on 44 For a thorough description of these politics, see Howard Ernst, Chesapeake Bay Blues: Science, Politics and the Struggle to Save the Bay (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003). 321 the Eastern Shore, sidestepping Maryland's 1984 Critical Areas Law through variances.45 The law prohibits clearing trees and construction within one hundred feet of the shoreline, but variances granted by counties circumvented the Critical Areas law. Most of these variances went toward building single family homes and condos like those that ring the J.M. Clayton Company (See Figure 32). Real estate developers had also circumvented new legislative efforts to curb sprawl and coastal erosion. In 1992 Maryland adopted Smart Growth policies to further curb sprawl-type development patterns by encouraging growth in preferred areas to limit the loss of rural, forested, and coastal land.46 However, Eastern Shore counties increased the overall amount of acres developed outside of these preferred areas between 1990 and 1999 even after the adoption of Smart Growth policies (See Table 23 and 24).47 Variances went to developers building single family homes and condos, increasing the population of the Eastern Shore 122 percent between 1990 and 2000.48 Despite efforts at smart growth, the growing power of real estate developers as sources of direct investment 45 Horton and Eichbawn, Turning the Tide: Saving the Chesapeake Bay. The issue of receiving variances and the failure of Maryland's Critical Area Law was made public in 2008 through a docwnentary by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Weary Shoreline aired in February 2008 just before the Maryland Assembly debated stricter laws on coastal development, see Maryland Public Television, "Press Release: Weary Shoreline," 2008, available from http://www.mpt.org/pressroom/pr/prdisplay.cfin?pruid=08022601, (accessed 28 February 2008). However, there are indications that organizations were aware of the problem, see Chesapeake Bay Program, Who Pays for Sprawl: the Economic, Social and Environmental Impacts of Sprawl Development (Washington DC: Environmental Protection Agency, 1998). 46 Chesapeake Bay Program, Who Pays for Sprawl: the Economic, Social and Environmental Impacts ofSprawl Development. 47 Maryland Department of Planning, Residential Growth by County Index: Improved Residential Parcels 20 Acres or Less 2006): available from http://www.mdp.state.md. us/msdc/PF A/Resid_Growth/by_ County!PF A_cnty _ index.htm (accessed 2008). 48 Maryland Department of Planning, 1990 and 2000 Population Density per Square Mile for Maryland Chesapeake Jurisdictions 2001): available from http://www.mdp.state.md.us/msdc/dw_popdensity.htm (accessed 30 April 2008). 322 quickly turned once public waterfront property into private subdivisions, marinas, and resorts, segregating coastal communities and disconnecting them from much used resources. In addition, the division of the Chesapeake into federal and state fiefdoms decentralized and streamlined authority to develop critical environmental areas, such as coastlines and wetlands, giving states and counties the ability to approve development permits without a multi-level review of the plans.49 For example, fiscal austerity measures enacted by the Reagan administration left the Chesapeake Bay Commission ineffective as the budget for the EPA was cut by $400 million dollars along with the budgets of state agencies. 50 Table 23. Percent of Total Eastern Shore Acres Developed for Housing, 1990-1999 m % Eastern Shore Tota! Acres Developed 1990-1999 Eastern Shore Counties Source: Data from Maryland Department of Planning. Residential Growth by County Index: Improved Residential Parcels 20 Acres or Less. 2006, Available from http://www.mdp.state.md. us/msdc/PF A/Resid_Growth/by_ County/PF A_ cnty _ index.htm (accessed 2008). 49 Ann Vileisis, Discovering the Unknown Landscape: A History ofAmerica's Wet/ands (Washington DC: Island Press, 1997). 50 Ibid. 323 Table 24. Growth Outside Preferred Areas Before and After Smart Growth Policies 100.0% 80.0% lill Prior to 60.0% Smart Growth 40.0% 1990-1996 20.0% M After Smart Growth 0.0% 1997-2005 '1J '1J "- .... .,, 0 '- ai .... t:..., <: ·u Q c: Source: Data from Maryland Department of Planning. Residential Growth by County Index: Improved Residential Parcels 20 Acres or Less. 2006, Available from http://www.mdp.state.md. us/msdc/PFA/Resid _Growth/by_ County/PF A_ cnty _index.htm (accessed 2008). Hawkie and Judy had watched land values skyrocket beginning in the late 1980s and farmers and coastal residents could no longer afford the taxes. Many people had to sell while others decided to "make their millions and retire" and by the late 1990s condos and waterfront homes sold for over $500,000.51 David Griffith has documented similar patterns of dispossession throughout the southeastern US coastline and calls this form of coastal gentrification "economic apartheid"-the revaluing of coastal land through shifts in investment strategies by state and private capital that create a geographical segregation ofrich and poor.52 However, while these residential tourists want watermen and 51 Melvin, Waterman. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 52 David Griffith, 11 Social Capital and Economic Apartheid Along the Coasts of the Americas, 11 Urban Anthropology 29, no. 3 (2000). 324 traditional occupations to be lifestyle amenities, as Hawkie pointed out they do not want watermen and seafood factories for neighbors. Wildlife artist C.D. Clarke explained why: Watermen are up at three in the morning in the summer, and their diesel engines are not quiet. And they love to tum their radios way up. They have remote speakers in their dock houses that pick up all the radio transmissions of all the watermen that are out on the water, and they leave them blaring at 3 o'clock in the morning, you know, with "Hey, Billybob what's going on over there?" just screaming across the cosmos, and I can see that kind of thing not fitting very well with some Washingtonian who's sleeping in on Sunday morning. And crab factories, which also start work at three in the morning, well it's not the image most people had when they moved out here. s3 Hawkie surmised "The whole reason people move out to the Eastern Shore is to live in the country but it won't be country any longer pretty soon. Course they call it progress. ,,s4 In the summer of 1997, as the domestic crabmeat industry prepared to implement HACCP for the first time, a new hazard entered the Chesapeake to test the system. Pfiesteria piscicida, a toxic microscopic alga, bloomed in the Bay.ss The alga is a dinoflagellate and related to the same algae that cause red and brown tides, creating dead zones in marine environments. Although Pfiesteria does not turn the water a different color, it created a dead zone in the Bay and caused lesions on fish and large fish kills. 53 C.D. Clarke grew up in a maritime community on Fire Island New York and lives in an area on the Eastern Shore known for soft crab production. The soft crab industry operates twenty-four hours a day seven days a week during the season with flood lights on during the night. Newcomers who have moved to this area during the winter usually move out by the next winter. C. D. Clarke, Wildlife Artist. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 13 April 1998, Tape Number MAAF/KF/MD/FT/4.13.213/604, transcript, Delmarva Folklife Project, Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum Collection, Frenchtown, MD. 54 Melvin, Waterman. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 55 lnformation on pfiesteria from Merril Leffler, "Seafood Safety in Maryland: So Far, So Good," Marine Notes (1997); Virginia Department of Health, Pfiesteria and Virginia's Waters available from http://www.vdh.state.va.us/epidemiology/DEE/Waterborne/Pfiesteria/ (accessed 1January2008). 325 The microtoxin also caused memory loss, confusion, and acute skin burning on people who repeatedly came into contact with the water and fish. Sales of Chesapeake seafood plummeted. Crab packing houses closed in Maryland and state tourism and other officials began to lament a disappearing tradition, increasing the cultural value of the crabmeat industry and Maryland crab cakes. But many factories sat on prime waterfront real-estate, and developers were quick to move in and replace empty crab factories with gated communities, condos, private marinas, and seafood restaurants. J.M. Clayton remained open, and the Brooks brothers worked with packers in North Carolina and Louisiana to try and reclaim "Maryland" as a place-based brand, as we shall see in the next chapter. Summary This chapter has described the results of all-you-can-eat development on several fronts, along with the uneven implementation ofHACCP based on competing views of risk. On one level, the Inner Harbor waterfront redevelopment project relied on importing tourists to consume the Chesapeake year round in the form of Maryland crab cakes and after fifteen years the first signs of stock collapse and over harvesting appeared. This was not the only way that people consumed the Bay, and on another level, residential and seasonal tourists harvested crabs for so-called recreational purposes that rivaled the volume of the commercial catch, but were subject to fewer regulations and minimal enforcement. Recreational crabbing has not been implicated in the decline of the Chesapeake's blue crab fishery, and instead has been viewed as a benign form of consumption. 326 Similarly, consuming the Bay also meant developing waterfront property and exclusive housing communities based on the value of the Chesapeake's beauty and the isolation and authenticity of its local maritime communities. These forms of dispossession occurred not only through the commercialization of Chesapeake heritage and the revaluation process that accompanied it, but also the fragmented, new governance systems for managing the Bay's resources and the ability of developers and governments to circumvent conservation measures. Ironically, the increased cultural and financial value of waterfront views and images of fishermen did little to prevent the loss of market share by the Chesapeake crabmeat industry from high volume imports of pasteurized crabmeat while adding to the value of the imports. As a result, the Chesapeake has become a place for outsiders. Meanwhile, the implementation ofHACCP in the Chesapeake did not produce an industrial quality convention because individual states shaped HACCP to existing values-based ideas of risk that did not control people and nature as the system did in Thailand. CHAPTER9 LABELS, AUTHENTICITY, AND TASTE The cumulative, selective process of modernity in action has repeatedly picked as criteria [for food] such things as standardization, efficiency, preservability, or convenience of packing and shipping. Although it is not always crystal clear which criterion of success is at the top of that list, it is difficult not to conclude that taste always seems to be at the bottom. Sidney Mintz, Food at Moderate Speeds Talking about flavor is like talking about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Lloyd Byrd By 1999, Maryland crab cakes made from imported crabmeat had become an authenticity niche gracing restaurant menus across the United States. While most chefs and food service distributors knew the crabmeat they purchased was imported, consumers in restaurants only saw the word "Maryland" on the menu. Chesapeake packers believed the importers had misled the public into assuming the crabmeat was from the Bay. They also felt these practices diluted their ability to market themselves and add value through place and authenticity.1 However, Maryland crab cakes had become more than just a national taste trend. At the state level, Maryland crab cakes represented the "success" of the state's efforts to reposition itself in the global economy. As a mass-marketed national 1 These themes reappear in all my interviews with packers, but see Jack Brooks, Bill Brooks, and Joe Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 11 January 2006, Cambridge, MD. 327 328 commodity, crabmeat and crab cakes represented consumer freedom and the nation- state's ability to extend these rights through the institutionalization of over- consumptionand over-harvesting, whether in the Bay or in Thailand. In legitimating the state and nation-state through the industrial food system, this authenticity niche had to be socially and politically defended. 2 This chapter examines the final step in standardizing the taste of tradition-the defense of so-called free markets and the solidification of structural power by crabmeat importers. First, I explore how the US crabmeat industry attempted to limit the importers' use of the word "Maryland" and state heritage through labeling laws at the state level. Then I consider the final effort by the US crabmeat industry-a petition for trade relief to the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC). This national-level analysis reveals how consumers, free markets, and the legend of Phillips were invoked as a way to solidify the new definition of quality as part of the industrial, corporate food system, making the market the locus of regulation. In both cases, we see how the importers remade the Chesapeake and other US crabmeat packers from the romanticized folk of heritage tourism into backward folk incapable of provisioning the nation. Designating Nature and Place In marketing themselves as the "taste of tradition," Phillips made tourists on the Eastern Shore and diners throughout the country believe their crabmeat came from the Chesapeake. Joel Rogers, lawyer for the Chesapeake crabmeat industry, observed: 2 Terry Marsden and Neil Wrigley, "Regulation, Retailing and Conswnption," Environment and Planning A 27 (1995). 329 Phillips has done a very successful job of marketing itself as "We're a Maryland family business!" If you're a Maryland family business, where is your crabmeat coming from? Well, gosh, I would assume it's probably coming from just down in the Bay.3 However, according to Maryland state legislator, Richard D' Amato, "Most people really did not get it that this was actually going on. They did not realize that the crabmeat they were eating at Phillips Crab House was not Chesapeake Bay crab.'.4 In addition, J.C. Tolley and other crabmeat packers had noticed that retailers and companies making heat and eat crab cakes often used the cheaper "imported crabmeat in the kitchen to make the value-added products and put [the domestic crabmeat] out for retail" misleading customers into thinking all of the crabmeat was locally produced.5 But as Joel Rogers pointed out, "The law does not require them to divulge the country of origin."6 As a result, the domestic industry began a campaign to change labeling and branding practices. In 1994 under US law, importers were not legally required to reveal the crabmeat' s country of origin to consumers, and frozen crab cakes made from imported crabmeat could legally say "product of USA." 7 Europe has a long history of protecting 3 Joel Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 14 August 2004, Washington DC. 4 Charles Richard D'Amato, Former Maryland State Delegate. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 12 January 2006, Annapolis, MD. 5 J.C. Tolley, Retired Owner, Meredith and Meredith. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 30 January 2006, Wingate, MD. 6 Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 7 Country of Origin Labeling laws still allow imported canned crabmeat that enters the United States and is "substantially transformed" to be labeled made in the USA. Thus, crabmeat imported from Thailand and transformed into frozen Maryland crab cakes were ''made in the USA". The US Congress revised the Country of Origin Labeling laws in the 2002 Farm Bill to require retailers to list the country of origin for fresh seafood, but frozen prepared products remained under the same legal structure. U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Mandatory Country of Origin Labeling of Fish and Shellfish Interim Rule," Federal Register 69, no. 192 (2004). 330 local foods through geographic indicator labels that certify a food's authenticity either by its place of origin or production methods. Barham notes that such labels act as a "form of collective property anchored to specific places" protected by EU states and the WTO, but the United States has never supported this practice. 8 Thus, places and authenticity are not protected in the United States. The only recourse in the United States is through the FDA's Usual Name regulation to prevent mislabeling and species substitution, a form of adulteration under federal law. Led by the Brooks brothers of J.M. Clayton, the National Blue Crab Industry Association (NBCIA), believed the importers' use of the word "Maryland" and "blue crabmeat" was fraudulent and misleading to consumers, and thus violated FDA regulations for adulteration. The NBCIA filed a petition with the FDA under the Usual Name regulation to allow only crabmeat from C. sapidus to be labeled "blue crabmeat."9 The FDA common name regulation makes distinctions about nature and place through the "meaningful name by which consumers ordinarily identify the food" and the basic properties of the food. 10 The Association based their petition on the idea of "meaningful name," and argued that the terms "blue crabmeat" and "crabmeat" referred only to the domestic blue crab, C. sapidus species, caught in the Chesapeake.11 The 8 Geographic Indicator labels are protected under the Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement of the WTO. Ironically, in many cases the production methods protected by Gls and TRIPS violate the SPS Agreement on food safety. Elizabeth Barham, "Translating Terroir: the Global Challenge of French AOC Labeling," Journal ofRural Studies 19, no. 1 (2003). 9 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 10 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "Crabmeat: Amendment of Common or Usual Name Regulation," Federal Register 63, no. 78 (1998). 11 Information on the petition from Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 331 Association noted that even FDA and Customs documents had used both terms interchangeably to refer only to crabmeat produced from this species in the United States, making the Callinectes sapidus synonymous with the word "crabmeat" and a specific place of origin-the United States. Therefore, crabmeat labeled as either "blue crabmeat" or just "crabmeat" that was not derived from C. sapidus was misbranded and therefore adulterated. The FDA took four years to review the petition, but in 1998 released a preliminary decision in favor of the NBCIA: The FDA concludes that the petitioner's claims that consumers are being misled are valid. The FDA also agrees with the petitioner that the generic 'crabmeat' labeling of imports misleads [consumers] because it implies that the crabmeat is domestic Blue crabmeat ... [and] does not adequately identify the food or allow consumers to distinguish between similar crabmeats that differ in value. 12 But the FDA also concluded that the petition and common name was "not sufficient to prevent the continuing abusive crabmeat labeling."13 The agency proposed to amend its regulations "more broadly than requested and to provide that all crabmeats must be identified on their label or labeling by the common or usual name of the species from which they are derived."14 In other words, the FDA ruling would require all imported crabmeat to be labeled using the country or origin's name, such as "Thailand crabmeat," or use the common name of the species, such as blue swimming crab. Despite the FDA's support of this petition and their preliminary decision, this regulation was never enacted. Importers argued that changing the labels on their 12 U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "Crabmeat: Amendment of Common or Usual Name Regulation." 13 Ibid. 14 Ibid. 332 inventory would be costly and thus violated the new federal cost efficiency legislation. They also argued that such changes would make the product too expensive for consumers, even though companies were already required to use these sorts of labels for the European market. 15 Despite these protests, importers voluntarily began changing the labels on their canned pasteurized crabmeat to read "blue swimming crab" and changed the name of the frozen crab cakes to "Maryland Style Crab Cakes." The name changes met the FDA definition of adulteration, and gave importers a way to control the types and level of regulation rather than the FDA. However, these labeling changes only covered retail products, and restaurants and chefs continued to use the names of Maryland and blue crab on their menus. 16 Members of the Maryland House of Delegates, such as Richard D'Amato, believed the new labels adopted by importers still misled the consumer: I was elected to the House of Delegates from the Annapolis area in 1998 and even while I was campaigning people came to me to complain about the importation of crabmeat and what they thought was misleading labeling of the products, particularly Phillips Crab House. 17 Led by D' Amato, delegates put forth House Bill 69 in 1999 to change the labeling practices of importers in the state. The bill required imported crabmeat products in any form to carry a country of origin label, but also made it illegal to use the name 15 In discussions with Richard D' Amato I learned that packers and legislators in the Bay area never found out why the FDA preliminary ruling seemed to "disappear" and attempts to speak with the FDA were not successful. D'Amato, Former Maryland State Delegate. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 16 The FDA has very little control over menu labeling according to Joel Rogers, Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 17 D'Amato, Former Maryland State Delegate. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 333 "Maryland" and "Maryland Style" on crabmeat products made from imported crabmeat. 18 In an effort to rebrand local crabmeat, the Maryland Department of Agriculture and Seafood Marketing Department created a decal for domestic packers to place on their cans that read "USA American Blue Crab."19 However, Maryland delegates and the domestic industry underestimated the importance of the word "Maryland" for both importers like Phillips and other state agencies involved in economic redevelopment. The Maryland label kept the product attached to a history and place that consumers recognized and trusted, rather than a foreign country. More importantly, this branding of place invoked a sense of authenticity, a major part of the product's selling point and Phillips' image as a "local" company. But the Legend of Phillips was now connected to its power relationships according to D'Amato: A lot of legislators supported me at first. [But] Phillips is an old Chesapeake Bay family. They waged a very strong lobbying effort against it, including their friend who was the Chairman of the Committee of Jurisdiction.20 Phillips hired notorious lobbyist Bruce Bereano whose efforts moved the bill from the Jurisdiction Committee to the Environmental Matters Committee.21 As D'Amato acknowledged, this buried the bill because of the legislature's lack of control over 18 Maryland House of Delegates, Environmental Matters Committee, Testimony Supporting HB 69: Imported Crab Meat Restrictions, 8 February 2000. The bill would have also made repacking imported crabmeat in domestic containers illegal as this had become prevalent in the United States. 19 I was conducting fieldwork on the Eastern Shore when the decals were created and distributed. I later discussed them with Bill Sieling, Maryland Department of Seafood Marketing, retired. Interview by Kelly Feltault, 5 May 2005, Dorchester County, MD. 20 D'Amato, Former Maryland State Delegate. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 21 According to D'Amato, Bereano had been convicted of over-billing his clients and funneling the money to political campaigns in 1994. Ibid. 334 environmental matters. As I outlined in Chapter Three, the state legislature lost control of managing natural resources during the 1970s when a new governance structure was put in place, and thus the Environmental Matters Committee had very little authority. In addition, Phillips' old friend William Schaeffer, former Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor responsible for putting Phillips in the Inner Harbor, testified that Phillips had been integral not only to Baltimore's redevelopment, but also to Maryland's continued growth.22 His testimony linked Phillips's ability to use the word "Maryland" with the state's successful position in the global economy and the expansion of the state "brand" so dependent on authenticity to increase tourism. Moreover, during testimony, Steve Phillips argued that the domestic industry needed to innovate and become more entrepreneurial. To illustrate his point, he regaled the legislators with the Legend of Phillips, which now included stories of his travels and travails through Southeast Asia "beating the jungle for crab."23 In the end, the importers' lawyers argued that the bill denied consumers the right to affordable crabmeat and violated federal trade law, including NAFTA, because individual states cannot set US trade policy and the bill was voted down in March of2000.24 However, these debates raised many of the issues that would unfold before the US International Trade Commission over the summer. 22 Maryland House of Delegates. Environmental Matters Committee, Testimony Supporting HB 69: Imported Crab Meat Restrictions. 23 Ibid. 24 D'Amato, Former Maryland State Delegate. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded. 335 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs In 1998, a small law firm in Washington D.C, approached J.M. Clayton and several other domestic crabmeat packers about the surging crabmeat imports from developing countries.25 Ablondi, Foster, Sobin and Davidow specialized in international trade cases and had won previous cases over imported crayfish and lamb, and felt sure crabmeat would be their next victory. Crabmeat packers in Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia formed the Blue Crab Coalition and in 1999 the law firm filed suit with the USITC on behalf of the Coalition, naming Phillips Foods and Byrd International as respondents.26 In response to the suit, Phillips and Byrd created the Coalition for the Free Trade of Crabmeat, which included chain restaurants such as Landry's and Darden, grocery chains such as Giant backed by Ahold International, the national distributors Sysco and US Food Service (also owned by Ahold), representatives from foreign governments, and seafood trade associations, and hired Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld to represent them.27 The crabmeat case was unique because previous cases, such as lamb and crayfish, had filed suit against foreign producers and importers, but this case pitted American companies from the same state against each other. The suit quickly became a debate over which companies and quality convention possessed the entrepreneurialism to supply consumers' right to eat Maryland crab cakes. 25 Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 26 Ibid. 27 U.S. International Trade Commission, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, L.L.P., Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf ofthe Coalition for Free Trade ofCrabmeat, 12 June 2000. 336 The Criteria for Injury The Crabmeat Suit was filed under Section 201 of the U.S. Trade Law known as the "Escape Clause." This law requires domestic companies to show that a surge in imports is the most significant cause of injury to their industry in order to get a three-year reprieve to adjust their marketing and production practices.28 The three criteria for determining injury are: 1) imports must have increased substantially in quantity; 2) the products must be alike or directly competitive; and 3) imports must be the primary cause of injury. According to U.S. trade law, "like" is defined as "substantially identical in inherent or intrinsic characteristics," including materials, appearance, quality, texture and other physical attributes. Similarly, the phrase "directly competitive" is defined as substitutable. 29 To assess these criteria, the Commission examines the products within a five year time period, 199 5-1999, and evaluates the physical properties, the production processes and locations, the uses of the product and their marketing channels. However, rather than rely on existing data, such as the National Marine Fisheries Service, the USITC conducts its own surveys and collects its own data supplied by all the companies involved.30 In defining trade law through these criteria, the US government required domestic crabmeat producers and importers to differentiate their products and their networks based on their quality conventions and the culturally specific end uses of crabmeat-crab cakes. The 28 Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 29 Information on the criteria from U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA- 201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs, Determination and Views ofthe Commission (Washington DC: USITC Publications, 2000). 3. 30 Rogers, Lawyer, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c. Interview by Kelly Feltault. 337 third criteria required the domestic industry to prove that imports were the primary cause of injury. This criterion opened the door to debates over the tragedy of the commons and issues of entrepreneurialism that raised doubts with many Commissioners. As one of the lawyers for the domestic industry suggested, "Phillips and the other respondents did what they always do, sort of throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks."31 What "stuck" was a formalization of quality and safety that became part of a new governance system through US law. In Defense of Taste The lawyers for the domestic industry based their arguments on two points related to the criteria: 1) the rise of imports coupled with the loss of market share for the domestic industry and 2) the taste of domestic crabmeat and misbranding. 32 Lawyers easily provided evidence that the volume and value of imported crabmeat had risen substantially, leading to the loss of market share for domestic packers, and thus was the primary cause of injury. For example, between 1995 and 1999 the volume of imported crabmeat had risen 550 percent while its value had increased 720 percent, but the production levels of domestic crabmeat packers had fallen by five million pounds because twenty-eight plants had closed during this time.33 The testimony of crabmeat packers reinforced this argument. 31 Ibid. 32 U.S. International Trade Commission, Ablondi, Foster, Sobin, and Davidow, p.c., Investigation No. TA-201- 71, Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Petitioner's Prehearing Brief on the Question ofInjury, 12 June 2000. 33 U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 15 June 2000, 10. The lawyers argued 338 North Carolina and Virginia packers testified that throughout the 1980s and early 1990s the industry grew, opening new plants and increasing capacity, similar to the experiences the Brooks brothers described in previous chapters. According to the packers, all of this changed in the 1990s with dire consequences, as one North Carolina packer described: In 1982 I took my total life savings and invested in a crab processing facility and I grew that business. We reached $1.3 million in sales, produced over 200,000 pounds of crabmeat a year-I lived the American dream. And slowly, in the early 1990s, the margins began to slip and over and over again, as I called my customers, the response was 'your price is too high; I can buy it cheaper imported.' So I reduced my price. Then in 1997 I couldn't sell my product at all and I closed the door and lost my total life savings and my home. 34 Most of the larger packers, such as J.M. Clayton, had each produced an average of 200,000 to 500,000 pounds of crabmeat a year since the mid 1980s, but had seen their sales reduced by thirty to fifty percent. 35 Many packers testified that the domestic industry was meeting the high volume demands of new customers, for example: In 1995 we were picking up all of these big chains. We were getting bigger because we had these customers coming on line with tremendous volume, and we were building plants. All of a sudden we had the plant capacity, we could meet the volume, but we were under priced.36 In fact, several crabmeat packers testified that one of the main customers had been Phillips, who they supplied until 1992 when the restaurant's imported crabmeat that the data collected from the USITC surveys represented a survivorship bias because only companies that remained open had been surveyed 34 Ibid., 20. 35 Investigation No. TA-201-71, Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Petitioner's Prehearing Brief on the Question ofInjury. 36 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U S. International Trade Commission, 74. 339 operations began. 37 The packers' testimony speaks to the "directly competitive" criteria by highlighting that the domestic industry was supplying high volume customers prior to the influx of imports, including customers in Colorado and California which had not been traditional markets for crabmeat. All of the packers who testified told similar stories- they had built up their pasteurization capacity and quality only to lose that market to imports. Prices were a significant point of debate for the domestic industry. As explained in Chapter Eight, the dockside price of crabs climbed dramatically starting in the 1980s, but by 1995 domestic packers could no longer afford to pay these high prices for crabs because they could not pass on the increased costs to customers. Much of this was due to the lower prices for imported crabmeat through programmed sales and other discount schemes targeting national accounts described in Chapter Seven. For the domestic packers and their lawyers, the high volumes of imported pasteurized crabmeat in inventory and on the market were evidence of market saturation and price control by the importers. The packers also pointed out that inventories for domestic pasteurized crabmeat had risen 19.1 percent since 1995, and that they "sold pasteurized jumbo lump at $16 a pound in 1985, but now I sell it for $14 a pound but I can't sell it at all; my customers said they didn't want it."38 The importers and their lawyers countered with pricing sheets that showed prices for imported crabmeat had actually increased since 1995, and Lloyd and Steve Phillips argued that they produced a "premium product" and 37 Ibid. 38 Ibid; U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs, Determination and Views ofthe Commission, 16. 340 did not give discounts.39 However, their testimony is contradicted by my interviews not only with them but with other seafood packers who all describe the discount schemes suppliers must participate in when working with national distributors such as Sysco or US Foodservice. Thus, pricing sheets may state the price, but there is always a bulk and private label price that is substantially lower. This testimony supported the criterion that the products were substitutable. Substitutability, however, was the key problem because domestic packers wanted to distinguish their product from the imported crabmeat through taste and tradition linked to place. The domestic industry and their lawyers attempted to do this from the beginning of the hearing. In their opening statement, the domestic industry's lawyers connected the blue crab's scientific name, Sapidus, to the crab's culinary traits, stating "it's all about taste."40 Jack Brooks testified, "We built a reputation over the years of having blue crab noted for its flavor and its traditions and its history," while another packer exclaimed "The only chance of survival of the blue crab industry is focusing on those qualities and characteristics that made our product superior-the taste." 41 Another packer from North Carolina linked the collapse of the domestic industry to possible loss of tourism dollars, "When you lose that segment of the culture, you lose the possibilities for a future 39 JnvestigationNo. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U.S. International Trade Commission. 40 Ibid., 9. 41 Ibid., 21, 26. 341 economy based on cultural tourism and a traditional delicacy."42 Finally, Domestic crabmeat packers linked their closures to the loss of a consumer's right to choose: And there is also at stake here a way of life, a tradition. Small business is the backbone of this country. Crab consumers have the right to make that choice, they have the right to choose between imported and domestic crabmeat, so this is a moral issue.43 The message was that after building up the market for 100 years domestic packers were losing customers to imported crabmeat marketed as a local, traditional product which was confusing consumers. The solution according to the domestic industry was a marketing campaign to re- educate the consumer and differentiate the domestic product from imported crabmeat. "We've got to educate consumers that they can't go in and just pick up crabmeat anymore," said one packer, and marketing surveys showed that consumers-the people who eat the crabmeat-found the domestic product tasted better.44 However, the decision about quality, and thus consumer choice, was really in the hands of the chef or distributor. The Blue Crab Coalition's defense of taste suggests that the domestic industry and the lawyers, at the time, did not understand how constructions of tradition and quality had already shaped their own image since the 1980s, as well as the role of heritage in branding Phillips or the company's importance to Maryland's continued economic growth. The most telling indication is found in the joint letter of support for the domestic industry signed by Republican and Democratic Congressional Senators from 42 Ibid., 36. 43 Ibid., 21. 44 Ibid., 57. 342 Virginia, North Carolina, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia-Maryland's two US Senators (Mikulski and Sarbanes) did not sign the letter.45 But the image of the Chesapeake portrayed during the testimony was not just a place of tradition, but also one of environmental collapse. Vice Chairman Miller announced, "You can't live in this area and not hear about what's going on with blue crabs in the Bay," raising the specter of crab scarcity in the Chesapeake. 46 In their arguments and briefs, the lawyers for the domestic industry attempted to dispel ideas that other factors had been the source of injury for the domestic packers, especially the crab supply and HACCP costs. The crab packers and lawyers responded that a shortage of crabs was not the problem; crab harvests had always fluctuated and controlling the harvest was an endemic problem offisheries.47 As evidence of controlling these uncertainties, packers testified that they had invested in refrigerated trucks to handle the seasonality and fluctuations in crab harvests by moving surplus crabs to areas where harvest levels had decreased or the season had ended. The problem, according to packers, was the lack of margins they were getting now and the fact that they no longer had any customers. 48 45 Letters of support plaintiff; Sarbanes was a staunch supporter of Chesapeake restoration, especially through heritage tourism, and in 1999 initiated the Chesapeake Gateways project, a federal grant program designed to transform more of the Chesapeake into heritage tourism sites. 46 Investigation No_ TA-201-71: Crabmeat.from Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US International Trade Commission, 68. - 47 Investigation No. TA-201-71, Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Petitioner's Prehearing Brief on the Question ofInjury. 48 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission. This evidence is scattered throughout the hearing testimony, as well as pages 68-73. 343 In returning to the issue of price, the lawyers for the domestic industry dismissed the costs ofHACCP as an injury to the industry, citing a survey of packers who ranked HACCP as the ninth most important factor affecting their business.49 However, as I have discussed in the previous chapter, the costs ofHACCP should be measured in the amount of intellectual and other labor required to maintain the system; costs that in Thailand were subsidized by the state and not factored into the USITC decision. In addition, based on my interviews, the Coalition and their lawyers were unaware of the differences in the implementation ofHACCP between the United States and Thailand. The domestic industry did not consider these issues and assumed that HACCP was the same industry- wide. Importers and their lawyers, however, used HACCP as one of the distinguishing characteristics of their entrepreneurialism and ability to meet consumers' rights, raising doubts about the quality and practices of the domestic packers. A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats? The Coalition for the Free Trade of Crabmeat built their case on the Legend of Phillips, portraying the domestic industry as lacking the innovation and entrepreneurialism needed to compete on the global market and satisfy the rights of consumers to consistent, high quality crabmeat. Their case emphasized the second and third criteria by highlighting the differences in quality, and suggesting a number of other factors responsible for the decline of the domestic industry. The lawyers set the tone in their pre-hearing brief by characterizing the expansion of crabmeat imports as "an American success story, inspired by Maryland-based Phillips Foods Inc. and followed by 49 National Fisheries Institute, NBC/A Survey ofBlue Crab Processors (Arlington VA: National Fisheries Institute, 1995). 344 like-minded American entrepreneurs."50 However, they also anchored this success story in the heritage of the Chesapeake, particularly the ideals of individualism and hard work associated with fishing communities. Nobody represented this image better than Steve Phillips. Steve Phillips took the stand first, explaining how he grew up on Hooper's Island in the Chesapeake where crabbing and hard work had been part of his "heritage" for over one hundred years.51 He recounted the Legend of Phillips by describing how he (alone) established plants in Asia because ''the employment of our staff and the survival of our restaurants were being threatened by crab shortages. "52 Phillips then positioned his import company as part of Baltimore's redevelopment through the employment of poor urban African Americans in the city, "we have 200 new, inner-city employees at our factory" but cautioned that "imposing quotas or tariffs on imported crabmeat will cost the US jobs" and then threatened "I will have no course of action other than to export these jobs to our foreign entities."53 The loss of jobs on the Eastern Shore and other rural, coastal areas was due to the failure of the domestic packers because ''the reality of the situation is that Phillips has helped the processors" by making crab cakes and crabmeat a popular menu item across the country and expanding the market. 54 According to 50 Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf of the Coalition for Free Trade of Crabmeat, 1. Emphasis in original. 51 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 156. 52 Ibid., 160. 53 Ibid. Phillips supported this with a letter from Elijah Cummings, member of the House of Representatives for the 7th District of Maryland, representing Baltimore. 54 Ibid., 157. 345 Phillips, "a rising tide floats all ships" and thus the "only serious injury" would be to the "American public and the thousands of supermarkets and restaurants across this nation" should the USITC impose "tariffs and quotas" limiting crabmeat availability.55 Having established the American entrepreneurial spirit within the importing companies, lawyers and importers moved onto describe how imported, pasteurized crabmeat and domestic fresh crabmeat were not substitutable due to quality differences, uses, and distribution. In creating a longer shelf-life and year round availability, Lloyd and Steven argued that pasteurized crabmeat was used in more value-added products where the taste differences were obscured, such as frozen crab cakes, soups, and stuffings. 56 They pointed out that these products were distributed through different channels, such as Sysco and US Foodservice, which, according to the lawyers, made imported and domestic crabmeat not alike or directly competitive. 57 This supported the company executives and lawyers' main argument that customers no longer purchased crabmeat based on price, but rather on quality. Quality was such a significant part of their case that during the investigation phase, Phillips and Byrd invited the Commissioners to Phillips' Baltimore headquarters for a cutting where they opened a can of Phillips, Byrd, and Clayton crabmeat.58 Then during the hearing testimony, both executives referred to this experience as a way to 55 Ibid., 157, 158. 56 Ibid. 57 Investigation No. TA-201-71 Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf of the Coalition for Free Trade ofCrabmeat. 58 Lloyd Byrd, Former Director oflntemational Operations, Phillips Foods, and Retired Owner Byrd International. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 15 November 2005, Berlin, MD. To my knowledge, the Commissioners did not visit a domestic crabmeat plant. 346 demonstrate the inferiority of domestic crabmeat. According to Lloyd, distributors continued to buy from suppliers they trusted, but trust was based on providing a quality product defined as consistent grading, low shell content, and high volume and that was fully traceable. 59 Referring to the cutting demonstration, Lloyd pointed out that the domestic industry did not have industry-wide grading standards and that most domestic packers mixed a large percentage of cheaper grades into the more expensive lump and backfin grades, creating high margins but shorting the customer. 60 The Senior Seafood buyer for Giant grocery stores, Mr. Hoppenjans, supported this testimony by stating that the "domestic industry grades jumbo lump and backfin when it really isn't,'' but he then pointed out the contradiction in the argument by stating, "but suppliers must conform to our grading standards. "61 This testimony exposes the fact that the importers did not have an industry-wide grading standard either despite Phillips and Byrd's insistence to the contrary. Instead, like the domestic industry, import companies were flexible enough to meet the requirements of customers. In reality, importers operated on corporate standards, some of which had become institutionalized in state law as in Thailand, but certainly had not been defined by the USFDA or other regulatory agency as "industry- wide".62 59 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission. 60 Ibid., 169. 61 Ibid., 178. Emphasis mine. 62 According to domestic packers, grocery stores (including Giant) had wanted the industry to create not only uniform grading standards, but also produce all of the crabmeat under the same label-a single brand of domestic crabmeat. 347 Shell content was another focal point linked to consumer freedom and cost savings. Corporate executives testified that shell-free crabmeat was now a major selling point, especially for restaurants, because of the labor saving costs. Lloyd stated that the domestic industry used the presence of shell fragments "as a sign of authenticity" but his "Asian operations have a zero tolerance for shell" and so did his customers.63 However, there was no mention of different state health standards in the United States and their impact on production practices. For example, even though domestic packers in North Carolina all testified that they repicked the crabmeat to remove the shell, importers used this quality concern to characterize the domestic crab pickers as too lazy to produce a qua1 1ty. pro duct. 64 Importers used the ability to obtain high volumes of crabmeat as another distinction. Phillips, the grocery stores, distributors, and other restaurants all stated that they switched to imported crabmeat because the domestic industry could not supply enough crabmeat. For example, Robert Coffman of US Foodservice testified that as the second largest food distributor in the United States, his company wanted only "high- volume items that we can have available in our warehouses for a regular, year-round supply."65 Coffman revealed that US Foodservice had not carried crabmeat because it was a fresh, seasonal product, but in 1985 they began to sell domestic pasteurized Maryland crabmeat and then in 1992 started carrying Phillips pasteurized crabmeat. 63 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatjrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U.S. International Trade Commission, 171. 64 Ibid. 65 Ibid., 172. 348 Hoppenjans testified that Giant would buy more domestic pasteurized crabmeat, but that it "was not always available in the quantities that I want" because the industry only pasteurized fifteen percent of its pack. Finally, both of these customers also stated that they preferred to buy from one supplier, whereas sourcing from domestic packers meant sourcing from multiple suppliers. 66 This testimony contradicts not only the earlier testimony from domestic packers, but my own analysis in Chapter Eight that shows domestic packers had met the demands of new, high volume customers but had lost that market to the importers due to prices. The testimony of importers and distributors helped to paint the picture of a scarce resource and an industry unwilling to modernize. This shows that customer buying patterns had shifted toward an industrial convention, but the testimony raises several other issues. First, these statements mask the fact that Phillips and Byrd sourced from multiple suppliers-the phae and maekhaa in Thailand and elsewhere. The use ofHACCP to make these suppliers accountable and place-based in their marketing scheme is also masked, while subsuming the breadth of the crabmeat commodity network under a single brand recognized by customers. Second, this testimony introduced the idea of resource scarcity in the United States, which I will discuss in detail shortly. Third, during the testimony Phillips stated that over the spring of 1999 they had shorted customers 1.9 million pounds of crabmeat "because we don't have enough" to fill orders, adding that "if the domestic industry really wanted to sell crabmeat, they could."67 Phillips' statement contradicted the inventory reports the company had supplied to the USITC, but also my research in Thailand. My examination 66 Grocery testimony from Ibid., 218. 67 Ibid., 191-192. 349 of the company's financial records in Thailand from 1995 through 2002 showed that Phillips was selective in their testimony because the company had a surplus of special, backfin, and claw grades of crabmeat but had shorted customers who had ordered jumbo and colossal lump meat-the most popular and least available grades.68 However, the USITC considers inventory to be products and raw materials in storage in the United States only and thus the USITC changed Phillips' inventory reports to reflect the fact that the company held very little inventory despite a surplus in Southeast Asia. 69 The final quality factor was safety, and Lloyd was quick to point out that concerns over seafood safety had increased throughout the 1990s. 70 According to Lloyd "imported crabmeat is fresher than fresh crabmeat" because it is pasteurized and thus free from bacteria and cannot decompose. 71 Pasteurization, in other words, not only preserved all the qualities of fresh crabmeat, but improved crabmeat's freshness by making it bacteria- free. This idea was supported by comparisons that importers made between their HACCP plans and the domestic industry that highlighted their organoleptic and laboratory testing. Importers not only emphasized the reduced pathogens, but described how they had greater control over safety through increased monitoring of the natural 68 Data compiled from Phillips Seafood Thailand Inc., Annual Financial Statements to the Ministry of Commerce (Hat Yai, Thailand: Royal Thai Government, Ministry of Commerce, Provincial Commercial Office 1995-2005), file number: [email protected] 1909. 69 U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Full Data Report (Washington DC: U.S. International Trade Commission, 2000). 70 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U. S. International Trade Commission. 71 Ibid. 350 resource. 72 In arguing that domestic and imported crabmeat were not substitutable because of quality distinctions, Phillips and Byrd challenged the second criteria by implying that the import companies had not taken over the markets of the domestic industry. Their lawyers further challenged the idea of substitutability by arguing that domestic crabmeat was strictly a regional food while imported crabmeat was national. 73 This completely contradicts their marketing strategy in which they began by taking over the regional, Mid-Atlantic markets and masks the dispossession that took place throughout the 1990s, as discussed in Chapter Seven. The second strategy of the Free Trade Coalition was to raise doubts about imported crabmeat as the primary cause of injury (criteria 3), doubts reinforced by questioning the entrepreneurialism of the domestic industry. In their pre-hearing brief, the law firm reminded the Commissioners of their duty according to Congress: Commissioners must "assure themselves" that imports are the primary cause of injury "not just one of a multitude of equal causes."74 The lawyers then listed the potential other causes of serious injury that Congress delineated as sources of "economic distress," which would render imports mute: changes in technology, consumer tastes, domestic competition from substitute products, plant obsolescence or poor management, intra- 72 Ibid. 73 Investigation No. TA-201- 71 Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf of the Coalition for Free Trade o/Crabmeat. 74 Ibid., 11. 351 industrial competition, government regulations, supply conditions resulting in higher input costs. 75 Moreover, they reminded the Commissioners that: The escape clause is not intended to protect industries which fail to help themselves become more competitive through reasonable research and investment efforts.76 The importers and retailers' testimonies had already shown that pasteurization-a change in technology-had reshaped consumer tastes, at least for chefs, distributors, and retailers. Furthermore, petitioners and respondents were both American companies, primarily from the same state, which raised questions about domestic and intra-industrial competition. Pakfoods and other foreign multinational corporations remained absent from the testimony and were, instead represented by their respective governments who portrayed their crabmeat industries as small-scale producers working under development projects. 77 Importers began to raise doubts by portraying the domestic industry, and the natural resource itself, as poorly managed while crabmeat packers were unwilling to modernize. The importers positioned government regulations as an example of poorly managed resources and industries because they limited production. Invoking the tragedy of the commons, Phillips stated, "the main issue is the decline of the resource," and the "problem is bad management, not imports."78 The import lawyers submitted a study by a fisheries economics professor at the University of Maryland showing that the Chesapeake 75 Ibid.11. Emphasis mine. 76 Ibid., 12. 77 See the letters from various governments submitted with Ibid. 78 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U S. International Trade Commission, 161. 352 blue crab fishery had reached its maximum sustainable yield (MSY) in the early 1990s and that the catch per unit effort (CPUE) had decreased dramatically during the period of investigation, 1995-1999. The study explained that this meant declining yields and smaller crabs, which translated to lower profit margins and reduced production for the domestic industry and not enough crabmeat for entrepreneurs such as Phillips and Byrd. 79 However, the USITCs limited historical perspective of five years allowed Phillips and Byrd to distance themselves from the overexploitation of the crab stocks and the elimination of conservation measures that began in the 1980s on the Bay as I have described elsewhere. Rather than connect overharvesting to his own restaurants, Phillips blamed the stock collapse of 1995 on the mismanagement of the resource by states and the local industry. He argued that the declining resource and the need to find a substitute was the reason for setting up factories in Asia in 1990, even though evidence of a stock collapse had not appeared until 1995.80 In contrast to this testimony, the USITC staff report indicated that crab harvests had declined in the Chesapeake, but increased substantially in other states making harvest levels stable nationally.81 Commissioner Miller, asked Phillips, "why some of the other 79 U.S. International Trade Commission, Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer and Feld, L.L.P., Investigation No. TA-201- 7 1 Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf ofthe Coalition for the Free Trade ofCrabmeat, Exhibit 14: Economic Factors Influencing the Domestic Crabmeat Processing Industry, 12 June 2000. 80 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U.S. International Trade Commission. 81 U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crab meat from Swimming Crabs: Full Data Report. 353 areas of the United States might not have been feasible" as a source of supply?82 Phillips responded that the high harvest levels were due to the CPUE-more crab pots and fishermen to catch the same amount of crabs-and that he knew the resource "was in trouble" even in 1990. Despite these concerns for resource management, Phillips, Byrd and their lawyers also argued that the 1995 increase in state regulations over crab harvests was another reason for going offshore because they limited production for their expanding markets. 83 Their testimony shows how the tragedy of the commons can easily be used to confuse policy makers by producing the marine environment as simultaneously over exploited but also over regulated. Phillips and the other companies did not consider the crab harvest levels in 1990 when they moved offshore, and, to be truthful, the data on MSY and CPUE was not available at that time. Interestingly, the discussions on over exploitation of the resource did not include Southeast Asia's resources. In their absence, Asia's resources remained abundant and seemingly untouched. Together, these possible causes for injury and the quality distinctions crafted an image of a domestic industry that had failed to innovate and was too fragmented and backward to meet the demands of consumers and compete in global markets. Steve Phillips told the Commissioners: The customer is different today than the customer was forty years ago, and the mentality [of the domestic industry] is that they really don't want to change the way they have done business. 84 82 Investigation No. TA-20I-7 I: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the U S. International Trade Commission.208. 83 Ibid., 207-208. 84 Ibid., 193. Emphasis mine. 354 In other words, the domestic industry did not have the intellectual ability to innovate and remained tied to pre-modem, pre-industrial methods of production and marketing-a domestic quality convention. The importers' lawyers supported this image two ways. First, they presented a marketing report and memo from 1992 that outlined the quality concerns and demands of large-scale customers for consistent grading, better branding, and more predictable deliveries. The lawyers argued that the domestic industry had known since 1992 what they had to change in order to be competitive, but ignored the demands of their customers. Second, using USITC data that showed the domestic industry had not invested in research and development, the lawyers showed that importers had invested millions of dollars toward new value-added products and packaging. In conjunction with this image, the lawyers argued that domestic crabmeat plants were obsolete because they were built in the 1920s and did not contain microbiological testing labs. 85 Missing from these descriptions of entrepreneurialism and competition are the state subsidies provided to importers by countries like Thailand. As described in Chapter Five, Phillips and Byrd did not pay for water, electricity, or employee social security for the first five years of operation-these forms of "free trade" were not part of the evidence. In their closing arguments, the lawyers stated that the three largest food distributors, the two largest seafood restaurant chains (Darden and Landry), the National Restaurant Association, the American Frozen Food Institute, and the Food Marketing Institute all opposed the petition: 85 The examples outlined thus far can be found in Investigation No. TA-201- 71 Crabmeat from Swimming Crabs: Prehearing Brief on Behalf ofthe Coalition for Free Trade ofCrabmeat. 355 Because they want access to low priced imports [that] greatly expanded their sales because they come in a form that is high quality, has a long shelf-life, is consistent, and is shell-free. 86 Their closing statements reminded the Commissioners that American jobs were at stake, but not the jobs provided by domestic crabmeat packers.87 The Decision The USITC handed down their decision in August, 2000, and only the Chairman and Vice-Chairman found in favor of the domestic industry.88 The remaining Commissioners found that imported crabmeat was not "being imported in such increased quantities as to be the substantial cause of serious injury" to the domestic crabmeat industry. 89 The Commissioners did admit that imports had increased in both actual terms and relative to the domestic industry's production, thus the first criterion was met. The Commissioners believed that domestic and imported crabmeat were "substantially identical in term of physical properties" and, therefore, alike and directly competitive, thus the second criterion was also met. However, the Commissioners qualified this decision by recognizing that imported, pasteurized crabmeat served the growing restaurant and industrial food service 86 Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs: Hearing Before the US. International Trade Commission, 274. 87 Ibid. 88 Commissioners Okun and Koplan argued that the record did not support the idea that imports have increased the overall demand for crabmeat without taking sales from domestic producers. They stated that the "overall effect of the increase in imports was to increase the supply of crabmeat, resulting in lower prices" and thus domestic packers did not benefit from the increased consumption of crabmeat. Facts regarding the findings come from U.S. International Trade Commission, Investigation No. TA-201-71: Crabmeatfrom Swimming Crabs, Determination and Views of the Commission. 40. 89 Ibid., 1. 356 industries, citing the product's use by national restaurant and grocery retail chains as well as national food service distributors. The Commissioners cited the quality attributes of imported crabmeat as major reasons for its sales to geographically distant markets, and its growing use in "value added" products like frozen crab cakes and soups. 90 They linked their qualification to the third criterion-the primary cause of injury, which the majority of Commissioners ruled was not met. The Commissioners divided domestic and imported crabmeat by the markets outlined by the importers, thus the domestic industry produced mostly fresh crabmeat for "a traditional and seasonal market along the east and Gulf coasts of the United States," even though that had been the initial target market for importers.91 They stated that "increased imports effectively expanded the US market rather than supplanting domestic production" because the growth in demand was for pasteurized crabmeat.92 Pasteurized crabmeat, according to the Commissioners, met the needs of an expanding restaurant and food service industry because of its industrial quality convention, especially its "longer shelf life, shell-free content, consistent grading and packaging."93 The USITC ruled that the domestic industry was incapable of meeting this demand for several reasons. First, they cited the small percentage of production for pasteurized crabmeat and the lack of inventory held by the domestic industry as evidence that no serious injury had occurred.94 90 Ibid., 4. 91 Ibid., 10. 92 Ibid., 16. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., 16. 357 Second, the Commissioners stated that the domestic industry had not experienced a decline in market share and sales, despite the statistical evidence and testimony indicating otherwise.95 In conjunction with this, the USITC data showed that the only domestic firms reporting substantial losses were family owned "smaller volume firms" and reasoned that because the industry had always been characterized by small, family owned operations these were "marginal" and expected to operate at a loss. 96 The Commissioners' juxtaposed these findings against the belief that Phillips was "desperately short of product" because they also did not hold large volumes of inventory here in the United States. 97 However, as I pointed out earlier this inventory did not reflect warehouse holdings in Asia not the particular grade in demand. In this statement, the USITC (and US law) denied the existence of a global food network. Finally, the Commissioners turned their attention to the health of the blue crab stock. They stated that the stable levels of harvest had been achieved through declining CPUE since 1990 "with possible adverse consequences to the long term viability of blue crab stocks."98 Thus, the domestic industry was unable to meet demand because '"the blue crab has reached its limits of production and greater harvests are not possible. "99 The decision naturalized the blue crab stock collapse and the search for a substitute while officially erasing Phillips' role in the social and environmental changes taking place on the Bay. 95 Ibid., 15. 96 Ibid., 13. 97 Ibid., 17. 98 Ibid., 21. 99 Ibid., 21. 358 Simultaneously, the Commissioners assumed crab supplies in Asia to be abundant and inexhaustible, and thus the perfect substitute. In this decision, the USITC agreed with the importers that a rising tide floats all boats and therefore reaffirmed the myth that demand existed before supply, and importers had not taken over the domestic industry markets in creating their national products. This obscured the dispossession of markets by importers and their efforts to change the palates of chefs and distributors. The decision also put a stamp of approval on the creation of a concentrated industry, whether at the import or domestic level. The closure of small US packers was considered a move toward efficient markets and "a healthier industry."100 Through this process, the USITC formalized the standardization of the Maryland crab cake and its place in the industrial food system. But these values are also part of the structure of US law through the comparisons that must be made and the lack of protection for places, regional identities, and actual fair competition. By sanctioning and privileging high volume suppliers and buyers, US law and the Commission institutionalized decisions made by Maryland and Thailand regarding who could compete and formalized appropriate forms of competition-the domestic industry could compete only as traditional businesses while importers and places like Thailand competed in a global market through the science of quality. The only concern was meeting the consumers' right to eat Maryland crab cakes whenever and where ever they pleased. 10°Comments of Commissioner Bragg, Ibid., 25. 359 Afterword After the decision in 2000, crabmeat imports surged even higher and Chesapeake and North Carolina crabmeat factories began closing at a faster pace. 101 I was still working on the Eastern Shore and wondered how Phillips had created these global networks and convinced people their Maryland crab cakes were still "local." I thought what does it really mean to connect two places through culture, economic growth, and natural resources? For me, the USITC decision was the start of this much larger project-answering the question, "how do you standardize the taste of tradition?" Based on my multi-sited research, the standardized Maryland crab cake represents two forms of accumulation by dispossession. On the one hand, Phillips and the other importers used HACCP to make modernist distinctions between products, people, and places and change the definition of quality in the restaurant industry. On the other hand, importers co-opted Maryland's heritage and the state's production of a pre-modem place in marketing their products. In doing so, these companies made it more imperative that Chesapeake crabmeat packers remain "traditional," and, as I have mentioned before, this requires the erasure of history. Early tourism projects erased the industry's early connections to capitalism and produced the independent, timeless waterman and artisanal, pre-capitalist seafood factory in order to market the Bay as a destination untouched by the fast-paced, globalized world. Later heritage tourism efforts continued this essentialized image, but added the imperative of cultural loss and conservation. Crabmeat importers selectively erased the 101 Doug Lipton, "Did the ITC Get it Wrong?: Crabmeat Imports Three Years Later," Maryland Aqua/armer Online, (2003), available from http://www.mdsg.umd.edu/Extension/Aquafarmer/Summer03.html#5 (accessed 3 July 2003). 360 more recent history of the industry in order to maintain the backward, inefficient crabmeat packer incapable of supplying consumers with what they demanded-cheap, year-round Maryland crab cakes. Relocated in the past, the Chesapeake crabmeat industry and the domestic quality convention centered on taste cannot meet the twin imperatives of global markets and consumer demand masquerading as freedom and the right to consume. Within this economic growth model, the sight of fishermen and fishing boats becomes more important and valuable than the actual fishing. In this way, the mass consumption of Maryland crab cakes becomes a means to legitimate not only the nation state, but also Maryland's economic strategies, including the dispossession of existing crabmeat markets and the further commodification of place. In the process, Phillips and other crabmeat importers solidified a new structural power for the crabmeat industry that set the terms of who could supply the market by differentiating nature and people. As of August 2008, J.M. Clayton remained open. One reason is that most of the crabmeat plants in North Carolina have closed, and crabbers there must now sell to the few remaining plants in Maryland or Virginia.102 Another reason is that the company has expanded their product line. Clayton's now offers heritage experience tours when the factory is closed during the winter and early spring. In the main picking room, tourists sit at the long metal tables with crab knife in hand adorned in plastic aprons and hair nets. They learn how to correctly pick a crab and weigh-up their crabmeat like a real crab picker. Not only can tourists be watermen by catching blue crabs recreationally, they can now be recreational laborers. The other new product offered by Clayton's is imported pasteurized crabmeat. 102 Brooks, Brooks, and Brooks, Owners, J.M. Clayton Company. Interview by Kelly Feltault. CHAPTER 10 CONCLUSION On a snowy February evening in 2009, I am watching television and cooking for my father-in-law's birthday party when a commercial runs for Golden Corral restaurants. This national chain, better known for serving cheap steaks, is offering a new seafood buffet featuring all-you-can-eat Maryland crabs cakes. My father-in-law turns to me and asks, "I thought you said the Chesapeake industry had collapsed?" I began this dissertation by telling readers that the collapse of the Chesapeake's blue crab fishery was a tragedy of dispossession rather than a tragedy of the commons. The reason, as detailed in this story, is that blue crabs became an authenticity niche that invoked the traditions and heritage of the Chesapeake even though the crabmeat was produced in Thailand. My father-in-law's question highlights the power of authenticity niche foods not only to invoke a place, but to freeze it in time by erasing history. As an authenticity niche, the Chesapeake remains perpetually abundant-the immense protein factory of the 1930s and 1940s-and Maryland crab cakes are disconnected from the global seafood industry, coastal development, stock collapse and racial discrimination in Thailand. It is easy to blame the "bad behavior" of fishermen when they are the only actors in the story. In recognizing blue crabs as simultaneously cuisine and a natural resource, I have connected the social and environmental changes taking place on the Chesapeake and in 361 362 Thailand to multiple forms of accumulation by dispossession-the processes and ideologies used by states and corporations to capture, remake, and revalue cultural and natural resources for the global market. This has required a multi-scalar and multi-sited historical approach and we have traveled from the· Chesapeake to Thailand and back again. In our travels, we have witnessed how specific attributes of nature-microbes, crab size, seasonality, taste, smell, isolated shorelines-became the basis for economic growth strategies through the production of difference. The preceding chapters have also shown how the invention of tradition, racialized notions of hygiene and food safety, and the expansion and defense of markets turned on social constructions of identity and consumption as marketable lifestyle choices. Production, then, has taken place not just in the factories, but throughout the crabmeat commodity network, whether through nature or culture, and with it a redistribution of power. This brings me back to Golden Corral's all you-can-eat Maryland crab cakes: in producing nature and culture for the market, the unseen product of global crabmeat networks is ultimately the unequal power relationships that lie at the heart of these dispossession processes. Powerful Connections In focusing on the changing meaning of Maryland crab cakes, my research has explored how value and capital accumulation are created closer to the point of consumption through definitions of authenticity (food quality) and seafood safety. This entailed tracing the entire network from the production of authenticity to the defense of markets. It meant turning our gaze away from fishermen toward the people responsible for inventing tradition, creating consumer demand, and producing the connections, 363 forces, and structures that make up global crabmeat commodity networks. As a result, I highlight how relational and structural power was created as part of the dispossession process, and how new and existing inequalities were woven into global networks to become part of their structural power. The significance of my research is that it provides a more nuanced understanding of what states, corporate executives, and other actors actually do, how and where they do it, and why. As I discussed in Chapter One, the alternative foods network literature assumes that place-based foods can rework the power relationships in the food supply system and add value to local products through the marketization of isolated, rural landscapes. My research, however, has shown how place, tradition, and regional and racial identities are used by states and corporations to create differences that become part of the relational and structural power inequalities embedded in the networks. This is particularly important in the United States where federal and state laws do not recognize place-based labels as proprietary to specific communities or production practices, as do their European counterparts. In Maryland, revaluation relied on making the Chesapeake into a unique destination consumed as state identity at Phillips' HarborPlace restaurant. Value was derived from the Chesapeake "folk"-the watermen and the "traditional" production practices of the crabmeat industry and those who worked there. This, together with the redistricting in the late 1960s, transformed the Bay from a place of work into a lifestyle amenity for suburbanites. The result was a new class structure on the Bay in which actors, such as Phillips and coastal developers, who could directly deliver the right to consume the place and culture of the Chesapeake gained power through alliances with the 364 state. These unequal relationships supported the structural power at the state level when the Chesapeake crabmeat packers attempted to require new labeling laws for imported crabmeat. As we watched Phillips and Byrd relocate to Thailand, we gained insight into how a local company expanded into a multinational corporation (MNC) and how they established the networks through relational power. In Thailand, Phillips and other companies used HACCP as a way to manage the social and environmental relationships in the networks through a mix of cultural and scientific rules, practices, knowledge, and vocabulary for harvesting and processing blue swimming crabs. HACCP provided a means to control women's labor in the mini plants through the threat ofrejected crabmeat. Muslim suppliers were further distinguished by Thai inspectors and companies who used HACCP's rules and practices to differentiate them from Buddhist suppliers based on Thai racial categories. These forms of relational power revalued the resource and started a bidding war for crabs while the export of Thailand's natural resources supported the Sufficiency Economy, but went undetected by the conservation branch of the Thai Department of Fisheries due to the existing disparities in that agency. As a result, new and old social and environmental inequalities are embedded in the global crabmeat networks and become part of Prime Minister Thaksin' s new social development policies. Upon return to the United States, the export-oriented industriali:Zation strategies of Maryland and Thailand merged. Remaking nature and culture through the global networks supported the restructuring of the restaurant industry and segmented markets. In this setting, the place-based power relationships embedded in the networks became the 365 basis for marketing strategies in the United States through price guarantees, traceability, and the export of Maryland heritage on a national scale. Finally, the USITC case shows how places and traditions are reproduced and inserted into existing ideologies and power structures and justified as satisfying consumer demand and succeeding in the global market. On a broader scale, authenticity niche foods traffic in economies of scale cloaked in nostalgia and place, but not just among suppliers within a single country, as I have described in Thailand. States and seafood corporations use HACCP to create an industrial quality convention, standardizing seafood products across different production practices, technologies, environments, and nation-states through rituals of verification- auditing and traceability. One result is volume. The decentralized, fragmented seafood industry now resembles the agro-food industry as a few multinationals consolidate and expand their economies of scale by "increasing the number of fishermen in their hand," as Thai phae owners would say. 1 In this way, small-scale fishermen and fisheries in multiple geographic areas are positioned within an American foodview and the restructuring of the restaurant industry. The second result is what Power calls "colonization" by the audit process.2 According to Power, when auditing becomes the dominant reference point for an organization, it penetrates knowledge production, creating a new actor. HACCP's auditing and traceability are part of a neoliberal value system built on notions of 1 This was a common phrase among phae owners, see for example Suwanii Tipmad, Owner, Wiya Crab Company Group. Interview by Kelly Feltault, digitally recorded, 23 March 2006, Phumriang, Thailand. 2 Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 94. 366 accountability and good governance, and have created what Lloyd Byrd calls "the HACCP-fearing seafood industry."3 The proliferation of third party audits, corporate laboratories, and the triumph of the science of quality over taste have made safety and quality assurance not only tangible products but have also created a new culture within the global seafood industry. In the words of one Global Procurement Officer at the Boston Seafood Show: I find suppliers and fishermen in villages that I trust and then educate them about how to control microbes and sanitation. My company needs these relationships to get consistent quality, so really my job is to build good relationships and build trust-you have to have trust. And then you have to verify, verify everything-in reality you can't trust anybody only the verification.4 Trust in the form of verification is embedded in the global culture of seafood networks, making HACCP an effective governance system while facilitating dispossession based on these network values. Economies-and thus crabmeat networks and fisheries-are always embedded in political and cultural relations. By tracing the length and breadth of the network, my research points toward possibilities for more ethnographic research on those who hold the means of production-the transnational corporate class and their ties to states. Through the dispossession process, neoliberalism has been remarkably effective in redistributing wealth and consolidating power for local and national elite. For example, Thailand's Sino-Thai elite retained power under neoliberalism even while seeming to reject neoliberal reforms and, as I mentioned earlier, a new class structure emerged in Maryland 3 Lloyd Byrd, "Spanning the Globe for Seafood," The Seafood Leader, June 1995. 4 Anonymous Executive, Interview by Kelly Feltault at the Boston Seafood Show, 11March2007, Boston, MA. 367 as coastlines were altered. My work demonstrates that capitalist class positions are historically situated, but also my work indicates that they shift in relation to changing locations. In Thailand, Phillips and Byrd did not have the same level of influence or familiarity with the Thai state as their Sino-Thai counterparts, and Pakfoods was able to leverage long-standing class relationships in order to obtain crabmeat from suppliers. My research has shown states as active participants in creating the mechanisms for and benefitting from the dispossession process and how multinational corporations are made by human actors. Yet, more ethnographic research is needed in order to understand the power relationships at work within this community of elites and to understand how transnational class identity and power are enacted and affirmed spatially across the processes of globalization. This would require a different kind ofresearch methodology, especially for fieldwork and participant observation, and like other fieldwork would require a certain level of respect for those being studied. Making Seafood Part of a Different Food Future My research has examined Maryland crab cakes as an authenticity niche, but my father-in-law's assumption about the localness of Golden Corral's Maryland crab cakes returns me to my original aims of telling this story. One goal was to make readers aware that the collapse of the blue crab fishery (and others) is being done in our name-the US consumer-and justified through our right to consume places, foods, and cultures as a lifestyle. Hopefully I have succeeded. The second aim was to expand the current dialogue on challenging our global food system, which merges with the first goal. 368 Alternative food systems, such as community supported agriculture (CSAs), and the literature surrounding them grew out· of desires to create environmentally and socially sustainable food systems. For CSAs sustainability means environmentally sound practices on small-scale, family-owned farms where consumers bought as direct from the farmer as possible, increasing the farm-gate price of crops. The belief is that a higher price for agricultural crops will break the cycle of high volumes of cheap foods, and the inequalities that accompany this foodview. In the case of geographic indicator (GI) labels, this civic quality convention and legal form of protection was intended to add value to the foods through the valorization of place and allow small-scale farmers to stay on their land. However, as I have already outlined, Maryland crab cakes question the efficacy of GI labeling and other place-based alternatives in the United States because the valorization of tradition and place becomes a box local communities must live within while developers and food corporations appropriate these meanings for capital accumulation. Until the legal system changes, communities do not hold the rights to place and identity in the United States. So what about sustainability approaches and how would alternative seafood networks need to be different from agriculture? The current discussion on seafood sustainability is taking place primarily among the seafood industry itself (with some input from activists). 5 As a result, sustainable seafood is currently defined as keeping consumption levels high and expanding the industry, while seeming to reduce wild 5 The 2009 Seafood Summit held in San Diego by the Seafood Choices Alliance centered on sustainability issues, but see these trade journals also: Lisa Duchene, "How Far Along are Buyer's Sustainability Programs?," Seafood Business 2008; Seafood Business, "Special Issue: Sustainable Seafood Buyer's Guide," Seafood Business 2008; Umer Barry's Reporter Magazine, "Sustainability Becomes Mainstream: Facing Sustainability Together," Urner Bany's Reporter 2007. 369 caught harvests through aquaculture and a proliferation of eco-labels. This discussion is divorced from arguments about buying directly from fishermen and small-scale processors and creating a living wage for seafood workers. The social and environmental changes taking place along US and other coastlines are also absent from this definition of sustainability. In fact, much of the discussion focuses on creating certification systems for sustainable and organic aquaculture. This civic quality convention is being introduced into an industry with a notorious reputation for environmental degradation, particularly in developing countries, and as the United States creates the infrastructure to expand its own open-ocean aquaculture. These efforts emanate from the belief that humans can remake and save marine nature by further controlling it like an industrial agricultural product. Yet, in Thailand I watched as aquaculture became the conservation measure once fisheries had collapsed and I wondered if aquaculture was not just a free pass to decimate wild stocks. 6 Industrially farmed fish (as it is currently practiced) is a questionable challenge to our globalized food system and the values it upholds. We must also keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of seafood purchases in the United States take place in restaurants, first by chefs and then by diners. This presents a completely different set of challenges, and legal structure, when trying to create responsible food systems. For example, current US law requires that grocery stores label seafood with the country of origin (if it is fresh or frozen, whole or filet). Restaurant menus are not required to tell diners where their seafood comes from, though a few exclusive seafood establishments make this form of labeling a value-added 6 Taylor makes this argument in the case of salmon, see Joseph E. Taylor, Making Salmon: an Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999). 370 practice. Instead, the seafood and restaurant industries have actually blocked proposals for menu labeling and efforts to make traceability more transparent in the United States, as it is in the EU. Given that most Americans buy their seafood at restaurants rather than cook it at home, what would community supported fisheries or fair trade fisheries look like? How can we enlist chefs to prevent the further globalization of localness in the seafood industry? And are we, the consumer, prepared to eat locally and seasonally when it comes to seafood? For me as a resident of Maryland, this would mean giving up the top five most consumed species (shrimp, tuna, salmon, Pollock, and tilapia) and dining instead on croaker, bluefish, rockfish, and, ifl can find them, blue crabs.7 But what would this mean for a reader in Ohio, Colorado, or Kansas? For me, sustainable seafood is about more than just harvest levels, it is also about livelihood security and addressing the problem of coastal over-development. Can a set of eco-social labels fix these problems or do we need to deal with the structural power fostering these forms of dispossession? To truly expand this dialogue, however, social scientists need to expand their research on seafood commodity networks and the global seafood industry, including histories of regional seafood cuisines. Otherwise, fishing communities and the fish themselves will all end up in a museum, as Chesapeake watermen have predicted. 7 National Fisheries Institute, "Top Ten Consumed Seafoods, 2007," AboutSeafood.com, 2008, available from http://www.aboutseafood.com/about/about-seafood/Top-l 0-Consumed-Seafoods, (accessed 12 August 2008). APPENDIX METHODS: MULTI-SITED ETHNOGRAPHY As an authenticity niche food, Maryland crab cakes bring together distant places and people in complex ways; an historical process that did not happen overnight or in a neat linear fashion. The methodological challenge, then, was to capture these multi- scalar and multi-sited processes over time, but also to see the unit of analysis as a network of places, people, ideas, and socio-environmental relations. Ethnographers have adopted multi-sited ethnography as a way to research the processes of globalization and ground these activities in specific places, histories, regulatory systems, and social and environmental relations. I employed Burawoy's extended case study approach to multi-sited ethnography, which uses mixed methodologies to extend the research not only across multiple places, but also through time. 1 I complemented these methods with Vayda' s event centered ecology approach which begins from an ecological event and then, like Burawoy, looks historically at the event and moves outward to understand the causes. This approach demands that the researcher suspend a priori judgment about the units of action and 1 Michael Burawoy, ed., Global Ethnography: Forces, Connections and Imaginations in a Postmodern World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), Zsuzsa Gille and Sean 0. Riain, "Global Ethnography," Annual Review ofSociology 28 (2002). 371 372 analysis until enough data is collected to make an assessment.2 The advantage of this approach was soon apparent as my initial assumption (based on the literature) was that Phillips and the other importing companies had gone offshore to take advantage of cheap labor. Instead, I quickly learned they went off shore to control the distribution and quality of the natural resource. This section first outlines the methods used across all the field sites to collect data and describes the secondary sites, such as trade shows. Then I explain how these methods were used in my primary field sites-the Chesapeake (particularly Maryland's Eastern Shore) and the southern coast along the Gulf of Thailand. Each place and body water together with its natural resources has been part of economic development activities for over a century. Review of Methods Based on Burawoy and Vayda's mixed methodologies, I started by grounding the study in local histories through oral histories and text analysis of government archival documents (hearing testimony, reports, regulations) and corporate records in both Thailand and the United States. I will detail who was interviewed in each site later, but initial interviewees were selected based on their role in the crabmeat network. Since one of the purposes of this research was to understand the social networks that constituted the export industry, I used snowball sampling to expand the interviewee base. Oral histories were complemented by additional qualitative data collected primarily through open- ended interviews and participant observation, including over 1800 photographs that I 2 Bonnie McCay, "An Intellectual History of Ecological Anthropology," in Against the Grain: The Vayda Tradition in Human Ecology and Ecological Anthropology, ed. Bradley Walters et al. (Lanham: Altamira Press, 2008). 373 took during fieldwork. 3 I recorded and transcribed all interviews and oral histories, and provided interviewees with audio and text copies. In Thailand, only interviews with Thai corporate executives were conducted in English and the remainder were conducted in Thai with the help of my research assistant and then transcribed in Thai and then English jointly by me and my research assistant. All interviews were indexed and coded using grounded theory. The photographs were entered into a database and indexed for location, date, people, and the data subject-technology, social relations, or mapping-and then catalogued for what was in the image. Participant observation usually entails living in the community or village under study and actively taking part in the daily routines and events of that place, and conversing and interacting with community members. As an active participant in a new culture, you are immersed in and therefore learn the norms of behavior, but also their meaning. For my study the "community" was a network of occupational sites ( crabmeat factories, corporate offices etc.) and socio-environmental relationships spread across two coastal areas. I lived in the coastal regions and commuted to factories and other sites of the network, and as much as possible took part in the daily activities of these locations. For example, I learned to pick crabs in the Chesapeake factories and to conduct sensory evaluations on crabmeat in Thailand, and I played golf with corporate executives. In addition, since much of my interviews and participant observation involved HACCP, I 3 Many of these photos appear in this dissertation. Photographs that I did not take are cited with a source. 374 took a HACCP training and certification course on-line in order to learn the langue of "safe seafood" and become competent in this culture ofrisk management.4 I triangulated the qualitative data against existing quantitative data from government, industry, and company records. I collected quantitative data on: crab harvests, production, consumption and export levels; corporate income and expenses; restaurant industry growth; and economic growth and coastal development. Although Maryland's tourism office had been promoting the state since the 1960s, quantitative tourism data had not been collected in a systematic method and very little data was collected prior to the 1990s. 5 Thus, for data on coastal development and tourism I relied on government reports, marketing materials, and recent studies on Chesapeake tourism. To the extent possible, I used the qualitative and quantitative data together with secondary data to piece together environmental histories and time lines of the Chesapeake and Thailand's gulf related to the crabmeat industry, including regulatory and socio- political histories. I also used interview data to diagram the changing structures of the local crabmeat networks in Maryland and Thailand. From here, fieldwork moved outward to explore the connections between different sites though the flow of people, ideas, and goods. As I worked outward from the Chesapeake and Thailand, I conducted fieldwork in places and on subjects that represented the industry at the national and global scales. I attended international seafood 4 This on-line course is used by US and international seafood packers, thus I learned what they did. 5 Maryland began purchasing tourism data from the National Travel Industry Association of America in the 1990s, as did other states, when this sector became one of the main economic growth strategies state-wide. 375 shows, such as the Boston Seafood Show and several in Southeast Asia. By watching interactions in the booths and attending the seminars and seafood summits during the shows, I observed the companies' marketing strategies in action and collected data on how important quality and safety was to the seafood industry as a whole. These shows also proved to be a good arena for brief, informal interviews with other seafood companies for more comparative data. 6 Moving outward from the sites meant recognizing the marine environment as a site through which social and political relationships developed. As I began collecting data on the history of seafood safety and the development of the seafood HACCP standard, I found that scholarship on seafood consumption was extremely thin and research on seafood safety and quality standards even thinner. 7 I had to collect primary data from Congressional testimonies, as well as reports from US government agencies, between the 1920s and 1999 on setting seafood safety standards, factory inspections, technology, and consumption. To augment this, I collected reports from the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) on the development of the model HACCP program, and interviewed Tom Billy who led the efforts to develop this program. Billy became the first Director of the Office of Seafood for the US FDA charged with implementing HACCP in the seafood industry and then became director of the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the USDA charged with implementing HACCP in the meat and poultry industries. He retired from federal service in 2001 as the Chair of Codex, the 6 These interviews were not recorded, but I made fieldnotes. 7 This was confirmed during a conversation with the historian for the Food and Drug Administration who conveyed that the agency archives did not have any documents on the history of seafood safety except for the regulations and inspection reports for factories. 376 United Nations body responsible for setting food safety standards globally, where he expanded HACCP standards. Using this data, I conducted content analysis that revealed how the marine environment and the seafood industry were produced as uncontrollable and risky, and how these risks changed between 1906 and 1999 in relation to changes in the restaurant industry and global trade, as discussed in chapter two. Collectively, this body of fieldwork allowed me to move "between sites" to understand connections between local processes and national and global scales. Chesapeake Fieldwork I was able to pursue the extended case study methodology in large part because of the fieldwork I conducted for two public projects-the Delmarva Folklife Project (1997- 1999) and the Crab Pickers Oral History Project (1998-2001). I was the senior researcher for The Delmarva project, which was broad in scope and sought to develop heritage tourism projects as a way to preserve culture.8 I conducted sixty-one interviews and took 998 photos for this project originally, and recoded and formally used fifteen of the interviews with crab pickers and watermen for my dissertation. 9 However, the original fieldwork, fieldnotes, and case studies for the Delmarva Project gave me a broad understanding of the changing economic purpose of the Bay, and the social and environmental impacts of this change across several social groups. I used much of my fieldnotes and other analytical materials from this project. 8 Elsewhere, I have written about the shortcomings of this project due to several assumptions project developers made about the root causes of social and economic change on the Bay that were not supported by data I or other fieldworkers collected. See Kelly Feltault, "Development Folklife: Human Security and Cultural Conservation" Journal ofAmerican Folklore 119, no. 471 (2006). 9 Copies of this collection are housed at the Center for Chesapeake Studies in St. Michaels Maryland. 377 I relied more heavily on the data collected during the Crab Pickers Oral History Project, in which I conducted forty-six oral histories and interviews and took 835 photographs. Because the crabmeat industry is seasonal (May through November), I conducted oral histories during the winter months, and participant observation in seven crabmeat factories during the summer each year of the project. I recorded oral histories with six packinghouse owners (current and retired) and forty crab pickers who had worked in the industry an average of sixty years. 10 I also interviewed watermen and natural resource managers. I conducted semi-structured follow-up interviews with twenty-five percent of these interviewees. In the summer, I started fieldwork at three or four in the morning when the crab pickers started work, and spent time in the packing house participating and observing the different steps in operations from steaming, picking, packing, distribution, and the front office. As part of the Crab Pickers project, I examined state and federal documents dated between 1900 and 1999 that included crab harvesting records, environmental and sanitation regulations, labor regulations, environmental reports on the Chesapeake, and Congressional hearings on declining crab stocks during the 1960s. This ethnographic environmental history became a method for tracing the regulatory structure and governance of the Chesapeake and crabmeat industry, as well as the industry's connections to wider political and economic processes discussed during the interviews. The fieldwork and archival data provided a picture of how the Chesapeake crabmeat value chain operated and changed over time, and the historical, social and environmental 10 These materials are part of the Crab Pickers Oral History Project Collection housed at the Center for Chesapeake Studies in St. Michaels, Maryland. Oral histories included interviews with the Mexican women brought in from Mexico under the H2B visa program to pick crabs. 378 factors that shaped crabmeat quality. Together, this fieldwork laid out a cultural, political and economic history of the industry juxtaposed against shifting environmental management and development patterns on the Chesapeake. The fieldwork and research for the Crab Picker's project provided me contacts that became the starting point for the Chesapeake portion of my dissertation research, which took place between 2004 and 2007. Thus, I was able to visit some sites and interviewees in the Chesapeake repeatedly over a ten year time period. In 2004, I began revisiting the Chesapeake packing house owners that took part in the original study, conducting a series of open ended interviews with each of them that had them reflect on the changes to the industry since the 1980s as the Maryland crab cake grew in popularity .11 The most immediately visible change was that four of the six packing houses I had originally documented were closed.12 Two of these companies allowed me to review their sales records dating from the 1930s to their closure in 2002. This data was rare because Chesapeake crabmeat companies (and seafood companies in general) are privately held and are not required to produce annual reports for shareholders like publicly held companies. Furthermore, the industry is highly secretive, which makes gathering data on markets, customers, fluctuating prices, costs, and production volumes difficult. To augment this data, I collected government reports dating from 1957 to 1983 on efforts to standardize and mechanize the Chesapeake industry. These reports contained surveys of the crabmeat industry, its markets and distribution systems, and 11 Many of the crab pickers and all of the retired packing house owners had passed away between 2001 and 2004 when I started the dissertation research. 12 Many of the crab pickers that I had interviewed had passed away by this time. 379 provided a picture of the industry at a specific time. This made it possible to compare industry practices across time periods and to further analyze changes in markets, consumption, and culturally informed defmitions of quality. This body of data also became a basis for interpreting claims made by crabmeat importers regarding the traditionality of the domestic crabmeat industry. For the dissertation research, I expanded the narrowly defined parameters for the interviews of the original study. I conducted open-ended interviews with state officials and others responsible for seafood quality and safety, such as seafood distributors, Maryland Health Department officials and state seafood inspectors, and the Seafood Technology Specialist for Maryland. I also interviewed with the lawyers and legislators who attempted to assist the Chesapeake crabmeat packers in the late 1990s through legal efforts to rebrand local Chesapeake companies and limit the level of imported crabmeat entering the United States. This fieldwork continued through 2007 and included follow up interviews and communication via email with packing house owners. Importers and Thailand Fieldwork Although all of the imported crabmeat companies operated in multiple countries in Asia, I chose Thailand as the second field site for several reasons. First, the country was one of the top seafood exporters in the world with its own multinational seafood corporations, including Thai Union (Bumble Bee brand tuna) and Pakfoods, the world's largest producer of frozen shrimp party platters. On more pragmatic matters, Thailand presented a less challenging logistical problem than the island nations oflndonesia and the Philippines where crabmeat processing centers were spread across islands with 380 limited transport connections. In contrast, the Gulf of Thailand boasts 198,838 miles of coastline and is a semi-tropical sea bordered by Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam with each country claiming fishing rights. Until recently, the Thai Gulf was the most productive marine fishing grounds in Southeast Asia. 13 The Gulf is shallow and its many estuaries enrich the coastal waters with organic matter and the mangroves provide spawning grounds for the diverse aquatic life. In Thailand, I was a visiting researcher at Walailak University in Nakhon Sri Thamarat province, approximately midway between Songkhla and Surat Thani provinces, the two main crabmeat processing centers in southern Thailand, and only an hour from Pakphanang where Pakfoods·had its crabmeat factory. From this location, I could visit the main factories and the suppliers within a few hours' drive. In 2004, when I started my dissertation research, the imported crabmeat industry was dominated by five companies that specialized in crabmeat: Phillips Foods, Byrd International, Ocean Technology, Handy International, and John Keeler Blue Star. 14 Of the five, only Keeler was located outside of Maryland and was not targeted for this research. 15 I held no illusions that people involved in the imported crabmeat industry would be as eager to participate in the research as the Chesapeake packers. When I began contacting the companies my previous fieldwork relations with Chesapeake 13 John Butcher, The Closing ofthe Frontier: A History ofthe Marine Fisheries ofSoutheast Asia C 1850 to 2000 (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, 2004). 14 The other crabmeat importers have other product lines such as frozen fish fillets, squid, and other seafood, and thus crabmeat was not something they specialized in but rather another taste trend to add to their pricing sheets. 15 I did conduct informal interviews with executives from Keeler at the Boston Seafood Show and via email. 381 packers preceded me in two cases. Byrd International and Ocean Technology invited me to their offices and produced the book I had written on the Chesapeake industry four years earlier, and admitted that they had telephoned several Chesapeake packers to get information on whether or not I could be trusted. According to the Chesapeake packers, I could be trusted. After providing the importers with an informational handout and establishing agreements on how I could use proprietary knowledge (customer lists, costs), I conducted a series of oral histories and in-depth interviews with each of the executives of these companies before departing for Thailand. Of the four in Maryland, Phillips and Byrd owned their factories in Southeast Asia, which contradicted the literature on globalization in general, and NTC in particular. Phillips, however, was the only company that owned restaurants and thus exhibited a vertically integrated production-consumption chain. Byrd International had been started by Lloyd Byrd, a microbiologist and the former Purchasing Director for Phillips Seafood Restaurants and the first Director of Overseas Operations for Phillips Foods. Lloyd established all of Phillips' factories and networks in Southeast Asia and took these relationships with him when he left to start Byrd International. I conducted an oral history and three open-ended interviews with Lloyd, who had retired from the industry. I therefore also conducted interviews with then Managing Director of Byrd International, Norman Whittington. Norman had been a Chesapeake waterman that left the water and initially worked for Sea Watch International managing their McDonald's crab cake products. Both Norman and Lloyd granted me access to their Thailand factory and provided me with contacts in the country. 382 My fieldwork with Phillips was not as smooth. I interviewed Shirley and Brice Phillips, who started (and still run) the original Phillips Seafood Restaurants in Ocean City. I also conducted two open-ended interviews and exchanged several emails with their restaurant manager, Paul Wall, who has worked for them for over forty years. However, after several months of negotiations with Honey Konicoff, the Vice-President of Marketing for Phillips Foods, I was able to conduct brief initial interviews with two staff members in 2004, but not the owner Steve Phillips. At this point, two things occurred that redirected my efforts. First, the tsunami hit Southeast Asia in December 2004 and destroyed most of Phillips' factory and suppliers on the Andaman seaside of the Thai peninsula. Then, in 2005, the company welcomed a reporter into their headquarters who claimed he was writing a story about Phillips recovering from the tsunami, but instead wrote a scathing essay entitled "Crab Imperialist."16 Honey called me to say that Phillips was no longer talking to anyone outside the industry, including me. The remainder of my data on Phillips came from trade journals, industry reports, company financial statements in Thailand, and oral histories and open-ended interviews with former Phillips employees and suppliers in Thailand and the United States. Ocean Technology began producing crabmeat in 1989 in Mexico a year before Phillips started operations overseas. One of the owners had been the seafood technology specialist for the state of North Carolina and the other had owned a seafood distribution company, and had good connections with restaurants and chefs. Like Phillips, Ocean Tech owned their factory in Mexico but subcontracted production in Thailand, and prior 16 In a phone conversation with the author, I learned that he had assumed a great deal about Phillps' operations and the product. Todd Kliman, "Crab Imperialist," City Paper, 15 July 2005. 383 to the start of my research the company had ended their subcontract in Thailand due to chloramphenicol contamination. 17 I conducted an oral history and semi-structured interview with the owner Bob Stryker using the data to compare practices and network structures. Handy began as a soft crab packer in Crisfield Maryland in 1917, and by the late 1990s was packing frozen crab cakes and soft crabs produced in Thailand where they subcontracted production. I had limited access to Handy in the United States and had to rely on trade journals and economic data from industry sources. However, I conducted fieldwork with some of their suppliers in Thailand, suppliers that also produced crabmeat for Phillips and Byrd. Like Ocean Tech, they provided a comparative reference. In all cases, the interviews covered the creation and management of the networks, marketing of the new commodity in the United States, quality control with the domestic industry and overseas, HACCP training, and their perceptions of sustainability, consumption, and regulations. I conducted follow-up interviews based on my Thailand data upon my return. I also relied on industry journals for both the seafood and restaurant industries because, like the domestic crabmeat packers, the importers are also privately owned. These journals provided not only statistical data but historical data on the overall global seafood industry and changes in the restaurant industry. Once in Thailand, I began research with Byrd International and Pakfoods. Initially I spent my time riding along the coast with the procurement officers (seafood purchasers) as they visited the local crabmeat suppliers. During this time, I was introduced to crabmeat suppliers, learned how prices are negotiated and the importance 17 Chloramphenicol is a carcinogenic anti-biotic that causes liver damage, anemia, nervous system disorders, and cancer. It is used heavily in the shrimp farming industry in Asia. 384 of the procurement officer in the network. I then began conducting fieldwork with the crabmeat suppliers on my own. This included participant observation in six factories and steaming stations, and oral histories and semi-structured interviews with twelve owners conducted in Thai. I often followed shipments of crabmeat from the suppliers to the main factories and through the reprocessing stages to canning and storage, conducting participant observation with each of these sections. I interviewed the HACCP team leaders, factory managers, and procurement officers, at this stage, again in Thai. I very quickly learned that everyone had, at one point, worked for Phillips and thus my interviews included oral histories of work experience with the company, and Phillips history in Thailand while soliciting comparative data from interviewees between Phillips and the company where they were currently employed. After four months of fieldwork at the processing stage, I began fieldwork with the state agencies supporting the industry. At the provincial level, I conducted semi structured interviews with Thai seafood inspectors, fisheries biologists and managers in Surat Thani, Songkhla, and Nakhon Sri Thamarat. I gathered data on inspection procedures and conservation measures during these interviews, as well as reports. In Thailand, the US companies had to submit annual financial statements, and thus I also collected these records in Songkhla, which provided data on inventories, expenditures, and to some extent production levels. I then headed to Bangkok to collect historical documentation at the Department of Fisheries (DOF), the National Economic and Social Development Board (NESDB), the Board of Investment (BOI), and the Ministries of Commerce and Industry, and at the Bangkok Post archives. This research provided data on the place of Thai fisheries in the economy and state development plans, state policies 385 and programs supporting fisheries, production and export data, and the annual reports of the Thai seafood companies. While in Bangkok, I conducted an open-ended interview the head of seafood safety for the Thai FDA, collecting data on the implementation of HACCP at the national level. At this time, I also conducted semi-structured interviews with three of Pakfoods' corporate executives: Alice Oui, Nick Chaamnanwet, and Jirot Sintavanuruk. As I had in the Chesapeake, I also took approximately 900 photographs and conducted follow-up interviews via email upon my return to the United States. 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