I'd say about a month ago I spoke with the Minister of Fisheries in St. John's, and I did raise that exact same question with him. Maybe the right model is a cooperative model, where you have an investment by fishermen, by plant workers, into your community, into your business.
I've worked with this industry for a long time. I've worked with FPI, I've worked with the Lake Group, I've worked with Bill Barry. I've been around this industry a long time. I left it for 10 years, moved to Ontario and then to B.C., and then moved back three years ago. I came back to the same turmoil that was there 10 years ago when I left. All these fishermen, every one of them, are right in what they're saying. We have to invest in our people, and I can honestly say that in all the businesses I have worked for in the fishing industry, the cooperative seems to be the right approach.
Now, we have our issues, there's no doubt about that, but I just think that if fishermen want to be involved more in the day-to-day runnings of their operations and what's going on in the plant, maybe the cooperative is the business model to look at.
I'd like, if I could, to touch on quality, because I worked a long time ago, when I started out, on the quality side of the business. That's what the Japanese buy; 65% to 70% of our product crab go into the Japanese market. They eat with their eyes; I've been to Japan a number of times, and colour is it. When they sit down to the table, it's colour, red, red, red, and the gulf crab is far superior in colour to our crab here in Newfoundland. You put them side by side and you'll see the difference.
Dockside landings are very important. Trucking fish across this island just doesn't work, so if you land it at the dock, that's one thing that we can preach to our markets in Japan and in the U.S. We have it landed daily at our docks. It's dockside. We don't take it, put it in a truck, and ship it 200 miles or 300 miles down the road for hours on end, and end up with dead crab at the end. So it's all issues in this industry. We have to stop the amount of trucking that's going on, and maybe that's what will bring back the vibrant communities. Process it where it is landed.