Quote:
Originally Posted by T-TOP
The oyster guy was informative, the problem is it takes legislature to change this. its been talked about on here before, the rep from jennnings tried to change this. He was met by heavy oposition (oyster fisherman) no one was there to support him on the changes and he changed the bill. For any change to occur it seems like it would take a lot of noise from people like the people that were there last night. I asked him for the people in the room that want change on the oyster harvest regs, who should we contact. He said our legislator is the one to contact.
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Legislative pressure is a great idea, but I expect it to take a while to work.
I've begun to think outside the box a bit. Do you know that there are a host of new regulations that the oyster harvesters need to comply with and also that DHH has the authority to close oystering grounds for health reasons? One idea that has potential is to begin photographing and documenting the oystering activities, both to improve our documentation of the ecological damage done by the dredging and also to gather information and make reports regarding non-compliance with the regulations. If state officials give oyster harvesters a pass on non-compliance, I don't think it would be too hard to get the FDA involved to shut down non-compliant operators, and some other states are very eager to cite health concerns as reasons to stop buying Louisiana Oysters. There is real potential to give the local oyster industry a black eye on failure to comply with new health regulations. Give some of the new regs a careful read, and I bet some action items come to mind:
http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/index.cfm/page/629/n/210
http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/...n_05102014.pdf
http://new.dhh.louisiana.gov/assets/...hure_14x17.pdf
http://www.wlf.louisiana.gov/news/37809
http://oysterlease.wlf.la.gov/oyster...tification.pdf