Waste not, want not

A collaboration between a Warren non-profit and a Warren seafood wholesaler is putting high-quality fish on the plates of food bank clients across the state

By Christy Nadalin
Posted 11/22/16

"Tony's Seafood has been a true gem in this project," says Sarah Schumann, founder and board president of the Warren-based nonprofit Eating with the Ecosystem. "They have set up a model that the …

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Waste not, want not

A collaboration between a Warren non-profit and a Warren seafood wholesaler is putting high-quality fish on the plates of food bank clients across the state

Posted

"Tony's Seafood has been a true gem in this project," says Sarah Schumann, founder and board president of the Warren-based nonprofit Eating with the Ecosystem. "They have set up a model that the other dealers can now follow."

Eating with the Ecosystem's mission is to rebalance our local seafood diets with the local ecosystem — to make our seafood eating choices mirror the kinds of fish that our ecosystem is producing in 2016. Last year they were awarded a Local Agriculture and Seafood Act (LASA) grant from the state of Rhode Island to work on getting local seafood into local food pantries. It's something that was unheard of, before they made it happen.

The idea arose after the folks at Eating with the Ecosystem heard stories from local fishermen about a time about ten years ago when they donated some 10,000 pounds of local scup to low-income Rhode Islanders between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While making that an ongoing thing seemed like a good plan, regulations presented some complications. Schumann approached the URI department of Environmental and Natural Resources Economics about working with some of their students to perform a feasibility study for moving under-appreciated species and underused parts of fish into the food pantry distribution system.

"With the students, we discovered that this seafood-to-food-pantry supply chain was probably feasible, but it wouldn't be easy," Schumann says. Enter the LASA grant, which funded a pilot project, Seafood for All RI, to test a supply chain that would distribute family-size frozen packages of fish, according to state regulations.

Schumann considers their collaboration with Warren-based seafood dealer Tony's Seafood to be one of their biggest success stories to date.

Along with his brother Anthony, Mark Pirri is the third generation of the Pirri family in the fish business — Tony's Seafood originally opened in Seekonk in 1979, with the wholesale division moving the the Warren facility in 1992. Mark works out of the Warren facility and is responsible for coordinating Tony's contributions to the Seafood for All RI project.

"We have been providing an interesting product — Codfish naps — to the RI Food Bank," Mark says. "It's essentially the bottom fillet or the thin part of the cod fillet that is located over the belly of a codfish. These Codfish pieces have been highly underutilized."

Twice a week since February, Tony's has provided frozen, 5 pound packages of cod naps to the food bank, for distribution throughout the state — about 400 pounds per week.

Not only are they supplying a high quality protein source to needy Rhode Islanders, the project is in keeping with Tony's nose-to-tail approach in processing fish. What doesn't get sold for human consumption is utilized as everything from bait to fertilizer be their wide-reaching range of customers.

While cod naps are Tony's current offering to the project, it won't necessarily end there. "We are working on different ideas," says Mark. "We want to see every fish fully utilized."

Schumann has the highest praise for Tony's contributions to Seafood for All RI. "Tony's is the early adopter, and they are proving it can be done," she says. "It's a great collaboration between a Warren-based nonprofit and a Warren-based business, and we are leading the way for the rest of the state."

For more information about Seafood for All RI or Eating with the Ecosystem, please call 401/297-6273 or visit eatingwiththeecosystem.org.




Eating with the Ecosystem, Tony's Seafood, RI Food Bank

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