[ODFW-News] ODFW provides Oregon Food Bank with 300, 000 salmon meals

[ODFW News]

Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife 	
Contact: 	Information and Education 503-947-6002
Internet: www.dfw.state.or.us  Fax: (503) 657-2050
	

For Immediate Release	Tuesday, November 23, 2004

ODFW provides Oregon Food Bank with 300,000 salmon meals

CLACKAMAS - Helping to combat hunger in Oregon, the Oregon Department
of Fish and Wildlife has donated more than 150,000 servings of salmon to
the Oregon Food Bank this fall and expects to donate another 150,000
during the holiday season, the agency announced today.

"This is the time of year when many people are really hurting and we
have the resources to help Oregon Food Bank provide some of Oregon's
bounty to the neediest in our state," said Bill Otto, ODFW hatchery
coordinator.

Oregon Food Bank will distribute the fillets to every county in Oregon
through a statewide network of 20 regional food banks and 780
hunger-relief agencies. The relief agencies will give the fillets to
people who are hungry. 

ODFW decided to donate this year's supply of excess returning
hatchery fish in support of Governor Ted Kulongoski's continuing
appeal to fight hunger in Oregon. Oregon remains among the top states in
the nation for hunger. 

The spring chinook and coho salmon donated to the food bank are
hatchery-reared fish that have returned to Oregon's hatcheries from
the ocean to complete their life cycle. This year, as in several of the
past years, ODFW hatcheries had many more fish return than necessary to
produce the next generation of hatchery fish. 

ODFW rears juvenile salmon at hatchery facilities throughout the state
to provide fish for sport and commercial fishing seasons, and to
mitigate for the loss of habitat. The juveniles are released into area
streams to make their way to the ocean. All Pacific salmon complete
their life cycle by returning from the ocean to the hatchery or stream
of their birth to spawn and die.

The fish donated are processed in accordance with federal food handling
guidelines by American/Canadian Fisheries, Inc., a company based in
Bellingham, Washington. American/Canadian provides all the staff and
equipment at no charge to ODFW and the food bank in exchange for the
opportunity to market by-products of the filleting process in
international markets. 


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