(The Center Square) – Maine Republicans are pushing back against a boycott effort targeting lobster sales, with a plan to eliminate tax breaks for Whole Foods and other food companies that pull the popular crustacean from their stores.
Legislation expected to be filed by the GOP minority for consideration in the next session would prevent Whole Foods, or other groups that ban lobster sales from getting tax breaks available to Maine businesses.
The proposal would also prohibit the state from entering into contracts with the nationwide grocery store chain.
Last week, Whole Foods announced plans to stop selling lobster caught in the Gulf of Maine at hundreds of its retail stores across the country. The company cited concerns raised by a pair of sustainability groups over the impact of the lobster industry on critically endangered north Atlantic right whales.
During the Tuesday briefing on the proposal, Republican lawmakers framed the issue as one of survival for the state’s storied lobster industry, which they say is struggling amid labor costs, foreign competition and costly federal regulations aimed at preventing whales from becoming entangled in fishing gear.
“Make no mistake – this is war,” said House Minority Leader Billy Bob Faulkingham, a lobsterman from Winter Harbor. “This is not just a war on lobster fishing. This is a war on workers. This is a war on family values. This a war on environmentalism. This is a war on science, and this is a war on common sense.”
The lobster boycott effort got underway earlier this year after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s environment-focused seafood watch program added lobsters to a list of foods to “avoid” due to their harvest allegedly putting whales at risk.
The proposal, if approved, would also direct the state attorney general’s office to conduct an investigation into the funding sources of the California-based seafood group pushing the boycott to determine if there are “foreign” funding sources involved.
North Atlantic right whales, driven to the brink of extinction in the 20th century by whalers, and are more recently at risk from ship collisions and entanglement in fishing gear. They have dwindled to a population of about 340, scientists say.
Environmental activists have been pressuring the federal government to ban commercial fishing nets and gear in state waters to prevent entanglements of whales and turtles.
But Maine’s leaders and representatives of the commercial fishing industry point to federal fisheries data showing the state’s lobstermen haven’t reported an entanglement with a right whale in nearly two decades.
The lobster fishery is one of the most valuable in the U.S. and was worth more than $900 million at the docks last year in Maine alone.
