The Maine Lobstermen’s Association (MLA) has issued an executive order forming an eight-person Task Force on the Economic Sustainability of Maine’s Lobster Industry. Patrice McCarron, MLA executive director, informed that one of the criteria for being eligible for the task force is that members cannot earn their living from the lobster industry.
According to MLA the task force consists of chairman Ron Philips, president of Coastal Enterprises, Inc.; co-chair McCarron; Philip Conkling, president of the Island Institute; Dana Dow, former state senator and president of Dow Furniture; Daniel Hildreth, of Diversified Communications; George Lapointe, commissioner, Maine Department of Marine Resources (DMR); James Nimon, of Maine’s Department of Economic and Community Development; and Dane Somers, Maine Lobster Promotion Council executive director.
Task force had the DMR put together a request for proposal to hire one or more consultants with experience in the food service industry who would conduct an analysis of various strategies based on the SWOT factor: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats of and to the lobster industry.
Maine’s lobster dealers have shown positive response to this proposal by calling a meeting of the Maine Import and Export Lobster Dealers Association [MIELDA,] at a Chinese restaurant in Brunswick. Peter McAleney, of Portland’s New Meadows Lobster and president of the Maine Import and Export Lobster Dealers Association, said that the lobster industry is not broken. He added that the whole world has a problem, not just the lobster industry.
McAleney went on saying that the idea that those eight guys will try to tell us in four months how to run the lobster industry, is nothing but a joke.
