Food Bank Benefits from Excess Salmon

So good, that the Oregon Food Bank network will benefit from some of the catch, reports a public news service.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife sells some Columbia River hatchery fish to a processor in Bellingham, Washington, which has a market for fish roe and carcasses, but not for the fillets. The processor freezes the fillets and returns them to Oregon for the Food Bank, where Mike Moran says they will be distributed starting this spring.

"We have not seen a substantial amount of fish – in fact, we haven't seen very much fish at all – for the past three or four years coming from Fish and Wildlife, because the returns have been so low. But this year, things have changed quite a bit."

Mr Moran says they never know how much salmon will arrive. The Food Bank gets whatever is left after Fish and Wildlife's other priorities are met.

"They have agreements with the tribes for a certain amount of the fish, and they also have stream restoration programmes, where they're reintroducing fish mostly for nutrient replacement upstream. In years like this year, when there's a substantial number of fish coming back, and all of their obligations are met, all of the excess fish then goes to Oregon Food Bank."