Rainforest Seafood Limited Settles With Fisheries Department

Rainforest Seafood Limited has agreed on a seven hundred and sixty thousand dollar settlement with the Fisheries Department, after four thousand pounds of undersized conch were found at its processing plant in Independence Village. Fisheries officers made the bust at the end of June during an inspection exercise. The confiscated conchs amounted to just under twenty-three thousand pieces. The standard fine for a piece of undersized conch is fifty dollars. At that rate, Rainforest Seafood Limited would have been required to pay close to one point two million dollars. But, the Fisheries Department’s internal policies permits a processor to have undersized conch so long as it amounts to no more than two percent of the entire quantity in storage. When you take away that two percent from the fifty thousand pounds Rainforest Seafood had in storage at the time, you are looking at roughly a thousand pounds or twenty-five percent of the quantity seized. Additionally, the conch that weighed in at just two point nine ounces, which is just below the prescribed three ounces, were also subtracted from the amount seized. This was done to give consideration to the shrinkage that takes place when the product is frozen and then thawed. So, a lot of math and science were factored in around the negotiation table. This ultimately brought down that one point two million dollar fine by just over three hundred thousand dollars.  Fisheries Administrator Rigoberto Quintana sought to justify the numbers in a press conference this afternoon; he was asked if the average fisher folk would receive the same treatment.

Rigoberto Quintana

Rigoberto Quintana, Fisheries Director, Belize Fisheries Department

“With those fines for the regular fisher folks I think had been one case that was charged over a hundred thousand dollars. Recently we had a combined case of three persons that was added to three persons charged that added up to a hundred thousand. But I can tell you the discussions surrounding the settlement; we have a sites inspection protocol. It is an internal policy of the Fisheries Department where we will allow for a minimum of two percent at the processing facility to be below the three ounces. That is a document that sites has agreed we apply at the processing facilities given the fact that one the product is processed there are further trimmings at the processing plant. Bear in mind the total amount of product in this case that was inspected for fifty thousand pound and if you look at that simple below two percent, we are talking about over twenty five percent of those products was seized. That is where we had those discussions in those settlements. Also, we have been advised by the office of the DPP and the AG that we have to have further discussion as to where we fill some of those gaps in the Fisheries Resources Act to look at some differentiation when we apply the law to fisher folks and these processing facilities. And there was the question of possible shrinkage during the thawing process. The evidence that we have is that they were thawed at least two times during the process. Given the evidence of the doubt in the negotiation agreement we said let’s look at the two point nine weights that we had in the sampling forms we came up with eight point two percent of that. When you add those two figures you come up with eight point two percent of that. When you add those two figures you come up with thirty-three point something percent. So it was like one third reduction.”