c. 2008 Religion News Service

BAY CITY, Mich. _ Every year during Lent, hundreds of folks come to the Richville Conservation Club to gobble all the fried cod they can eat.

The soaring price of fish, however, is munching up club profits.

“A lot of the guys who volunteer here are pushing the fried chicken fingers because we serve them, too, and they don’t cost us as much,” said Dave Peyok Sr., 64, the club’s business manager.

“But this can’t become a chicken-finger fry _ not during Lent,” Peyok said.

So far, the club has kept its price for its cod dinner at $8. The club’s directors could raise the price, but Peyok said “I got a feeling that won’t happen until next year, and we’re just gonna bite the bullet.”

That’s getting harder to do, considering cod prices, which “really took a jump this year” according to Mike Bolger, co-owner of the Huron Fish Co. in Saginaw, Mich.

Cod, an ocean fish, is “not real plentiful anymore _ five years ago they were talking about how there won’t be any more cod in 10 years,” Bolger said.

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, based in Denmark, reports cod stocks in the North Sea are at a “critical level” and have rapidly declined since the 1990s.

Bolger said Icelandic cod’s wholesale price _ that paid by fish-fry planners _ jumped by more than $2 per pound in the fall, to $4.79.

Peyok said the Richville Conservation Club paid $2.60 per pound for its cod in 2005, but that price rose to $3.70 per pound last year. This January, the club paid $4.50 per pound for the fish, he said.

Other fish fries are in the same boat, according to Jim DeWyse, 65, an organizer of Bay City Knights of Columbus Council 4102’s fish fry.

“The price of cod went up, but it’s just like everything else, like gasoline,” said DeWyse, whose fish fry raised its price from $8 last year to $9 this Lent.

The cost of soybean oil _ used to fry the cod and perch served by the council’s volunteers _ also jumped this year, said DeWyse, whose fish fry serves up both Alaskan and Chinese cod.

And it doesn’t help that some customers bend fish-fry rules when it comes to perch.

“Our fish fry is all-you-can-eat, and we still catch people putting pieces of perch in their purses, trying to carry ’em home,” DeWyse said.

Another fellow ate his meal, then loaded a second foam plate and covered it with another plate.

“He was going to carry it out the door, after he’d filled it up with fish,” DeWyse said.

The Essexville Knights of Columbus Council 2740’s fish fry raised the price of its all-you-can-eat fried pollack dinner from $6.50 to $8 this Lent, said Steve Savage, event organizer.

“The cost of the soybean cooking oil has gone up, and the cost of the paper products we use has gone up, the price of pollack has gone up and the price of shrimp has gone up considerably,” Savage said.

“It isn’t one thing specifically. It’s just been a little bit across the board.”

(Tom Gilchrist writes for the Bay City Times in Bay City, Mich.)

KRE/DS END GILCHRIST

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