World Aquaculture December 2019

WWW.WA S.ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • DECEMBER 2019 27 the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The Senate substituted HR-20 with Senator Daniel Inouye’s (D-HI) bill S-1650. Inouye’s version had 13 co-sponsors including, to my great relief, some of the most powerful members of the Senate. S-1650 passed the Senate on April 30, 1980 and was referred back to the House of Representatives. The House adopted the Senate’s bill in lieu of HR-20 and, with minor technical amendments, approved the bill on September 8, 1980. It went back to the Senate where it was agreed to on September 11, 1980. President Carter was an ardent fisherman and would on occasion slip out of the White House to visit the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service laboratory near Leetown, WV, where he would spend an hour or so fishing in nearby streams and ponds. On one such visit, after his pocket veto, director of the laboratory Bob Putz and I made sure he would cast into a pond stocked especially for his visit with large Atlantic salmon, hand-reared for research purposes. He caught one and as he marveled over his catch, Bob said, “Mr. President, this is what aquaculture can do for this country.” On September 16, 1980, both the House of Representatives and the Senate passed the bill and sent it to the White House for signature later that day. President Jimmy Carter signed the bill on September 26, 1980, and the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 bill became law as PL 96-362, a week short of my birthday and the pocket veto of 1978. Bob and I were delighted to each receive a copy of PL 96-362 autographed by President Carter. Beginnings of US Aquaculture Policy Interest in establishing a clear national U.S. policy for commercial aquaculture began in earnest when it dawned on a number of interested observers and members of the scientific community that we didn’t have one. This realization crystalized in 1976 during and after a technical conference on aquaculture held in Kyoto, Japan, organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). In the mid-1970s I was working as staff scientist in the National Research Council (NRC), the “working” part of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Mindful of the aquaculture policy- void in the U.S. government, Dave Wallace, Associate Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with jurisdiction over international fisheries programs and Chairman The Winding Road to Approval of the National Aquaculture Act of 1980 On my birthday (October 6) in 1978, President Jimmy Carter surprised a lot of interested folks by not signing HR-9370, a bill to provide for the development of aquaculture in the United States – The National Aquaculture Act. He gave it a “pocket veto.” 1 Happy Birthday! No one was more surprised and anxious than me, having spent much time and energy working to formulate and implement strategies to nudge our governmental apparatus into recognizing and adopting the fledging aquaculture industry as a legitimate client for government programs and services already available to other food-related production enterprises. Moreover, I had played a major role in re-drafting many of the provisions in the final bill and had spent several years on studies and reports whose recommendations identified needed aquaculture policies and programs in key U.S. government departments and agencies. I was beginning to take this as a personal insult! However, as it turned out, Carter’s pocket veto in 1978 set in motion a stream of events, activities and policy decisions in which government policy and economic support activities for aquaculture in the United States remain rooted today. The pocket veto drew attention to flaws in the original version and gave us a chance to fix themwhile adding some new and key clarifying language. Pocket vetoes occur when the President disapproves of one or more of a bill’s provisions but supports the bill in general. Most such bills are reintroduced in the next session of Congress after removal or modifications of the offending provisions. That is what happened next in this case. The Carter Administration had objected to several financing authorizations provisioned in the bill. I rewrote the bill after deleting those provisions and, with assistance and support fromDennis Prager, then Assistant Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in the Carter White House, the revised draft bill floated through OMB for pre-approval and on to Capitol Hill. The revised bill (HR-20) was introduced in the House on January 15, 1979 by John M. Murphy (D-NY) and 23 co- sponsors. It passed through the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee and the Agriculture Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bill passed the full House on September 8, 1979 and was sent to the Senate for action, where it was referred to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry and The National Aquaculture Act of 1980 – From Pocket Veto to a 40-year Anniversary: Memories and Reflections Bille Hougart ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 2 8 ) Carter’s pocket veto in 1978 set in motion a stream of events, activities and policy decisions in which government policy and economic support activities for aquaculture in the United States remain rooted today. The pocket veto drew attention to flaws in the original version and gave us a chance to fix them while adding some new and key clarifying language.