Marketing helps struggling trout industry: ; Official credited with recovery

DAILY MAIL CAPITOL REPORTER

West Virginia's trout farming industry dodged a major blow thissummer thanks to Teresa Halloran.

Department of Agriculture Deputy Commissioner Steve Hannahcredits Halloran with pulling a key piece of the state trout farmingindustry's infrastructure through financial troubles with hermarketing efforts.

"A young lady did an excellent job is kind of the bottom line,"Hannah said.

The Department of Agriculture took over a trout farming andprocessing operation near Beckley about 2 1/2 years ago after itsowner went into receivership. The state had invested in theoperation so the Legislature asked the department to take it over.

The idea was that the department would run the operation until itbroke even or started making a profit. Then the state would be ableto sell it to a private operator.

But earlier this summer, Tom Brand of the Department ofAgriculture told a group of lawmakers that the operation was runningout of money. If it didn't get $100,000 within a few weeks, theDepartment of Agriculture would have to shut it down, he said.

The facility is crucial to the state's little trout farmingindustry, department officials say.

West Virginia trout producers need to be able to sell their fishon two markets - to people who stock their ponds and rivers and topeople who eat it - if they're going to survive. And the stateprocessing plant is pretty much the only place where producers couldsend their fish to be turned into food, Brand said.

"If we shut the operation down, that will be a severe blow to thetrout industry in the state" he said in July.

"We think it's a critical facility in the state," Hannah saidlast week.

The operation didn't get any additional money and it didn't shutdown, Hannah said. That's because sales increased 37 percent.

Now Hannah says the operation should be OK unless an emergencystrikes. And it's selling more trout than it can produce.

"The market is absolutely there, we just have to get theproduction up," Hanna said.

Halloran, who started with the agency in May, said she's simplyworked to develop new accounts. That's something that the previousoperators of the processing plant apparently did not do, she said.

Halloran sells fresh trout, smoked rainbow trout fillets, smokedrainbow trout pate and smoked rainbow trout jerky to stores,including Kroger, she said.

Writer Sam Tranum can be reached at 348-4872 or by e-mail atsamt@dailymail.com.

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