The former oyster farmer who straddles industry policy and government regulations

Meet Bob Rheault of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association

The east coast of the USA produces about $90 million worth of oysters and $75 million worth of clams annually. Bob Rheault is trying to help it grow even bigger.

As the executive director of the East Coast Shellfish Growers Association (ECSGA), it’s his mission to help the industry thrive. As a former oyster farmer himself, he understands the challenges they face and with his scientific background - a Ph.D. in biological oceanography and an adjunct professor in the Department of Fisheries, Aquaculture and Veterinary Science at the University of Rhode Island - he knows what he’s talking about.

“There are about 1,200 farms on the east coast and the vast majority are small mom and pop operations. I used to be able to joke that I could count the number of big farms without having to take my shoes off, but there are a growing number now,” Bob says.

“The industry takes in about $170 million in harvest, half clams and half oysters. The big news is oyster production has doubled in the last five years and was poised to double again when somebody pulled the rug out from under us.” When the COVID crisis hit and restaurants were shuttered we learned that 95% of oysters were eaten at restaurants and markets evaporated overnight.

Bob Rheault (photo by ECSGA)

Bob sees much of his role as “keeping the regulators from putting us out of business.”

“Good regulations are incredibly difficult to make. The law of unintended consequences rears its head all the time and you almost invariably end up screwing somebody,” he says.

The Interstate Shellfish Sanitation Conference (ISSC) is one of the regulators. It was created to set uniform standards so all the states are on a level regulatory playing field. Bob says his job is to make sure those regulations are workable for the industry.

“They meet every two years, there used to be 800 pages of regulations but there are only 600 now because we managed to trim it down,” Bob says, only half-joking.

“We (the ESCGA) have a seat at the table. It’s not necessarily a vote but we can inform regulators about the impact of what they want to do.”

The ISSC is composed of state regulators, but it is overseen by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA’s mandate is to prevent all illness, which is an unrealistic challenge when it comes to raw food such as oysters.

“The FDA comes in and says we want to implement this onerous regulation.  Then the states talk to those in the industry who give feedback. We point out that Option A could put this guy out of business, option B is too expensive for this farmer to implement, etc” Bob says.

One of the examples of the FDA vs farmers is when the FDA decided that sea scallop meat packaged in sealed containers is a risk for clostridium botulinum, even though it had been sold in sealed containers for 100 years and there had never been a reported case.

Bob and the ECSGA pushed back. He set up hearings in Washington DC and asked the FDA to justify their stance to the legislators. The farmers won.

“You need to strike a balance. I’m a huge advocate for public health, but we want regulations to be affordable, practical and effective. You can’t help us if you make up stupid policies that have no impact on public health,” he says.

“I view my role as a public health advocate who is trying to push back on irrational regulations.”

Bob has also been dubbed the ‘Vibrio Evangelist.’

Vibrio is a naturally occurring bacterial pathogen that isn’t associated with pollution or sewerage, but because it’s ubiquitous in the ocean it can cause illnesses in those who like to eat uncooked seafood.

“Vibrios are everywhere in the ocean, but only a handful of them make people sick. Cholera is a Vibrio, one associated with fresh water and poor sanitation. We have one (thankfully rare) Vibrio known as V. vulnificus that kills about 35 people a year. Half of the fatalities come from wound infections when people cut themselves swimming and about half come from eating oysters raw.  Thankfully V. vulnificus is so rare that most doctors will never see a case in their entire career, but the fatalities are terrible for the markets. We have another Vibrio called V. parahaemolyiticus which is far more common. There are hundreds of reported illnesses, but most are of the kind where you lose a few pounds and need to stay near a bathroom,” Bob explains.

“Vibrio became a focal point of the ISSC about 20 years ago. They decided they’d done a magnificent job of controlling illnesses related to wastewater treatment, yet Vibrio numbers still continued to climb. They hadn’t taken into account that oyster production had doubled, and more people were eating raw oysters in summer.

“Consumption habits changed. Oysters were traditionally a winter crop, they were only eaten in months with an ‘R’ in them, but when aquaculture became prevalent more people started eating them in summer. Vibros love warm waters, so if you have a lot more oysters being eaten in summer you might expect more illnesses.

“In the old days, we’d leave oysters out on the deck in summer, where it can reach up to 40C. Vibrio is unparalleled in its ability to replicate, it can double every 15 minutes at those temperatures.

“We learnt that if we harvest and chill product below 10C as soon as we take it out of the water, we can stop the growth of Vibrios. We’ve invested hundreds of millions of dollars in ice machines, coolers and training people in the new normal. We can’t tolerate bad management and illnesses; we had to change what we were doing.” It was a huge challenge and Bob spent years training industry members on the new rules. “I would say it has been a huge success.”

Bob is unique in that he straddles both sides of the coin – industry and government.

“I’m the biggest advocate the FDA could hope for in terms of teaching our industry how to avoid illness, but at the same time I’m a giant thorn in their side when they say something stupid,” Bob explains.

“It’s a fine line between advocating and regulating. Many times, you come up against nuances where you think, ‘This will be a good regulation to protect public health, but when you roll it out you see it could put certain types of farmers out of business. “This is why it’s really important that industry has a seat at the table and can point out these unintended consequences before bad regulations become law. The ISSC meeting is incredibly important.

Every year we also travel to Washington, DC to educate our elected representatives about what we do, how important we are, the jobs and economic impact we provide and what kind of programs we need. We depend on our legislators to fund things like genetic research, and crop insurance and occasionally we ask them to straighten out the regulators if they push too far, so it is important to have strong relationships with our congressional reps.”

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