PORTLAND — Portland Mayor Michael Brennan wants students, hospital patients and jail inmates to eat more fish — particularly, locally caught fish.
Entering the final year of his four-year term, Brennan is hoping to convince Greater Portland cafeteria operators to commit to serving local fish, an effort he said would create a stable, constant demand to boost the commercial fishing industry in Maine’s largest city.
The mayor mentioned the initiative for the first time publicly during his annual State of the City address Wednesday night, but he has been quietly trying to rally support for the large-scale, buy-local-fish effort for months.
“One of our priorities is marine resources and creating opportunities along the waterfront,” Brennan said. “We started thinking about — if there are fish that are available — (whether) we could create a market among those institutions that serve meals every day on a regular basis. (We posed the question), ‘Is there a way we could guarantee that market?’”
The mayor said the Portland area is replete with hospitals, schools and correctional facilities — among other places — that already likely serve fish products, including fish sticks and fish sandwiches, regularly in their cafeterias.
Brennan reasoned that simply asking those institutions to commit to buying products made from locally caught fish would generate new, wholesale demand for groundfish on the Portland waterfront.
The mayor said John Spritz, head of the Growing Portland collaborative, has played a crucial role in communicating with potential stakeholders in the initiative.
“So far, nobody has said, ‘No.’ A few people are already doing this, trying to purchase preferentially local,” Spritz said.
“In the conversations I’ve had, nobody has said it can’t be done, or that there’s some major barrier we haven’t thought through at this point,” Brennan said. “And I think we’ve talked to enough people that if there was a significant red flag, it would have emerged.”
But both Spritz and the mayor acknowledged there’s work to do. Brennan said area fish processors — there are several in Portland — will need the institutional food buyers to order locally caught fish products in a volume high enough to make the venture worthwhile.
And he said those institutional food buyers, the ones responsible for stocking the kitchen inventories of places such as hospitals and schools, will need the local fish options to be priced similarly to whatever wholesale national or international suppliers they’re already using.
Kevin O’Connor, director of nutritional services at Maine Medical Center in Portland, suggested in a statement that he’s willing to hear Brennan out, but he acknowledged the numbers would have to work in the hospital’s budget.
“Maine Medical Center is a participant in the Hospital Healthy Food Initiative under the Partnership for a Healthy America. Under that program, we include healthy, local and sustainable options in our cafeteria,” he said. “Currently, the fish on our menu is sold to us in frozen portion-controlled pieces that are ready to serve. If there is an affordable option to what we do now, we would consider a local purchase.”
Spritz said that finding a formula that works for everybody will be a challenge, but he noted that “it’s just one degree we’re talking about all sides.”
“We also need to know what prices per pound will make it worth the while of the fishermen,” Brennan said.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
