5-18 IAN Seafood at Its Best

 Did you know that 30 MILLION is the number of food-size trout—12” or longer—that Idaho fish producers sold in 2009. That’s 73% of the 41 million trout sold throughout the U.S. Receipts to Idaho trout producers: $36 million. But aquaculture here is not as rosy as it may sound at first.

Gary Fornshell’s a University of Idaho Extension educator who co-authored a curriculum called Seafood at Its Best in an effort to bolster seafood consumption: “within that curriculum we have four lessons one of which focuses on the health benefits of seafood and another focuses on the risks of seafood, it’s the actual risks versus the perceived risks so it puts things in perspective for people and gives science-based information so they become a more informed consumer. Aquaculture is a very significant industry here in south central Idaho and trout makes up the majority of the Idaho aquaculture industry. Actually the numbers for the last few years have declined in terms of production. I think that reflects both the economic recession and also declining water flows. Normally over the last 20 some odd years we’ve averaged around 41,000,000 pounds average production and according to USDA in 2010 we produced around 33.8 million pounds, it’s come down from that.