Seafood Company Hit with Jones Act Penalties over Railroad to Nowhere

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Seafood Company Hit with Jones Act Penalties over Railroad to Nowhere

8 Sep 2021

In a saner world, sending frozen fish from Alaska to the East Coast would be a relatively simple undertaking. Fish or other types of seafood would be placed onto ships in Alaska and dispatched to the other side of the country for unloading and eventual transport to consumers. But domestic water transportation is subject to the Jones Act, which means this process is not so straightforward. Ships both capable of handling items requiring cold storage and compliant with the law’s strictures are expensive and few in number. And none operate regularly scheduled service from Alaska to destinations beyond the West Coast. American Seafoods Company (ASC), however, has been able to find a way around the Jones Act morass. For the past 20 years, the company has loaded fish in Dutch Harbor, Alaska onto foreign ships that are then sent to New Brunswick, Canada via the Panama Canal. From there—and this is the interesting part of the arrangement—the seafood is offloaded and placed onto a very short stretch of railroad track, taken up and down the railroad on a journey to nowhere, then offloaded again and placed on trucks for transportation to the United States.
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Authors

Colin Grabow

Published in
United States of America

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