Company News - - Taylor Shellfish Farms, Inc.

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Monday, January 8, 2007

US Marine Aquaculture & Our Commitment to Sustainability

HULIQ.com

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Shell Out for Shellfish to Keep Puget Sound Clean

The Seattle Times

Thursday, January 18, 2007

SAM Sculpture Park Cafe Fuses Taste with Social Responsibility

Seattle Post Intelligencer

Friday, February 2, 2007

Fanny Bay Oysters makes a deal with Taylor Shellfish

Times Colonist

Friday, February 2, 2007

Taylor Shellfish Farms Acquires Fanny Bay Oysters, Ltd.

February 2, 2007

For Immediate Release

Contact: Jon Rowley 206-963-5959 rowley@nwlink.com

TAYLOR SHELLFISH FARMS ACQUIRES FANNY BAY OYSTERS LTD., BRITISH COLUMBIA'S LARGEST SHELLFISH PRODUCER

Shelton, WA: Taylor Shellfish Farms www.taylorshellfish.com of Shelton, WA, has acquired the 22 year old family-run Fanny Bay Oyster Company www.fannybayoysters.com headquartered in Union Bay, British Columbia from Glenn and Sharon Hadden, long time friends of the Taylor family. The purchase includes the highly-regarded Fanny Bay name, a 20,000 square foot state-of-the-art processing plant, 250 acres of prime growing area in Baynes Sound north of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island and a popular retail store next to the Denman Island ferry landing. Eighty long-time employees will be retained under Taylor ownership. "Fanny Bay has regarded employees as family", says Taylor president, Bill Taylor. "We will continue that relationship."

"We are excited about the future," says Sharon Hadden. "The Taylors bring a new level of professionalism to the shellfish industry in B. C."

"The Hadden's business philosophies are similar to ours", adds Taylor. "We see a very good fit. With their excellent reputation in the half shell market, Fanny Bay oysters will fit nicely into our product profile. Other than shifting a few of the crops and using our resources to boost production, we don't envision any substantial changes. Our main interest is secuing a long term supply of consistent and superior quality oysters." The Fanny Bay acquisition will increase Taylor's half shell production by 20% to approximately 50 million oysters.

The purchase of Fanny Bay Oysters follows the purchase of four smaller B.C. companies in the Powell River area since 2001. Fanny Bay will provide processing capability for those farms. In May of 2006 Taylor also completed a $3.5 million, 22,000 square foot processing plant at their headquarters in Shelton, Washington building in capacity for growth. "The shellfish market is strong and will continue to grow," says Taylor.

Taylor Shellfish Farms is a fourth generation family-owned company with nearly 500 employees farming shellfish on 9500 acres of owned and leased tideland in Puget Sound and Willapa Bay in Washington State, British Columbia and Mexico. The company has hatcheries in Kona, Hawaii and Quilcene, Washington, a pearl farm in Fiji and a distribution company in Hong Kong. Taylor produces Manila clams, Mediterranean mussels, geoduck, a variety of live, shucked and frozen oysters and shellfish seed for national and international markets.

Saturday, February 3, 2007

Major shellfish company gets bigger

Seattle Times

Sunday, February 4, 2007

Cupid's pantry: Gift ideas for the food-obsessed lover: Amorous oysters

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review

Monday, February 5, 2007

U.S. company buys Canada's biggest oyster producer

International Herald Tribune

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

See John Stewart (Daily Show) clip of Mike Rowe (Dirty Jobs) and Taylor geoduck

Comedy Central John Stewart Daily Show

Monday, February 12, 2007

Taylor Shellfish Acquires Canadian Oyster Company

Fish Information & Services (FIS)

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

See clip of Taylor Oyster Sampler on NBC's Today Show

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17071313/

Sunday, February 25, 2007

King Clam: Innuendo aside, geoduck is the stuff of regal repasts

Seattle Times

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Justin Taylor: Longtime oyster grower

The Olympian

Monday, April 9, 2007

Restoration on the Half Shell

New York Times

Friday, May 18, 2007

Puget Sound Treaty Indian Tribes, Shellfish Growers Reach Pact

Puget Sound Treaty Indian Tribes, Shellfish Growers Reach Pact

May 18, 2007

Puget Sound treaty Indian tribes and commercial shellfish growers have finalized an agreement that will protect and enhance the resource while resolving legal issues from a federal court ruling that re-affirmed treaty-reserved tribal shellfish harvest rights.

The pact resolves lingering legal issues from a 1994 federal court ruling that upheld the tribes' treaty-reserved shellfish harvest rights. The agreement preserves the health of the shellfish industry, recognizes the importance to the tribes of their shellfish harvest rights and provides greater shellfish harvest opportunities for everyone in the state.

"We had a choice, and we chose cooperation," said Billy Frank Jr., chairman of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission. "Everyone loses when we turn to the courts to settle natural resource issues. The shellfish resource is too important - to tribal cultures, to the shellfish industry and to everyone who lives in the Puget Sound region - for us to fight over it."

"Shellfish growers and the tribes have developed a fair solution to a difficult problem. This agreement will right an historical wrong and will put more shellfish on the tidelands for everyone," said Bill Taylor, president of Taylor Shellfish Co.

"Shellfish are an important resource in Washington and the fact that everyone came together to reach an agreement underscores their vital role in our economy," said Governor Chris Gregoire.

The settlement brings closure to unresolved issues from Judge Edward Rafeedie's 1994 federal court ruling that upheld 17 tribes' treaty-reserved right to half of the harvestable shellfish in western Washington. The ruling also affirmed the tribes as co-managers of the resource with the State of Washington.

Implementing Rafeedie's ruling, however, proved extremely difficult because the state and federal governments had allowed many of the best tribal shellfish harvest areas to be sold to private owners more than a century ago. Those purchasers were never told that those tidelands might be subject to tribal treaty harvest, and over the years, the commercial shellfish industry flourished in the region. Today, in Mason County alone, the shellfish industry is the second largest private employer.

Chief among several unresolved aspects of Rafeedie's ruling was how tribes were to harvest their share of naturally occurring shellfish on private commercial tidelands. While the ruling prohibited tribes from harvesting shellfish from "staked and cultivated" beds enhanced by private owners, it upheld the tribes' right to half of the naturally occurring shellfish on those tidelands. Accessing those shellfish, however, would be hugely disruptive and cost prohibitive for commercial shellfish growers who had spent many years enhancing those tidelands.

"Fault for creating this controversy lies squarely with the State of Washington and the United States, for selling the tidelands and not objecting to the sale, respectively," Judge Rafeedie said.

Key components of the agreement between shellfish growers and the tribes include:

-The tribes will forego their treaty right to harvest an estimated $2 million of shellfish annually from commercial shellfish growers' beds.

-Over the next 10 years growers will provide $500,000 worth of shellfish enhancement on public tidelands of the state's choosing, adding value to the agreement that benefits all citizens of the state.

-The tribes will be able to access a $33 million trust, established with $11 million in state funds and $22 million in federal funds, to acquire and enhance other tidelands to which they will have exclusive access.

"This is an historic event that reaches closure on a fundamentally important aspect of resource management in our state," said Doug Sutherland, Commissioner of Public Lands. "The parties have worked long and hard to reach this agreement and I am very pleased to see it reach this fair and equitable solution."

Congressman Norm Dicks, who was instrumental in securing the federal portion of funding for the settlement, said he is please with the results. "I will continue working to get the federal share of the settlement appropriated and will work with the tribes as they develop an enhanced shellfish industry. This settlement also provides our state's commercial shellfish growers with the certainty they have been seeking."

Contacts: Tony Forsman, Shellfish Coordinator, NW Indian Fisheries Commission, (360) 297-0089 or Tony Meyer, NWIFC, (360), 528-4325; Bill Dewey, Taylor Shellfish Co., (360) 426-6178