The state of Florida has extended a law that exempts aquaculture production documents from the state’s public records law, arguing that producers need to keep that information private from their competitors.
“This bill saves the repeal of public records exemptions for specified aquaculture records held by the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services – specifically, those types of documents that will be unable to be accessed by the public will include aquaculture production,” Florida Representative Richard Gentry told the Florida House Housing, Agriculture and Tourism Subcommittee during a January hearing.
Florida requires commercial aquaculture operations to file production data with the state government. However, in 2021, the state passed a law exempting several types of aquaculture production documents from the state’s Open Government Sunset Review Act, which allows the public to access documents filed with the government.
The 2021 law exempted shellfish receiving and production records, audit records and supporting documentation for submerged land leases, and aquaculture production record and receipts. Advocates claim that allowing the public to access those records would have a “chilling effect” on aquaculture producers supplying that information, as they would be concerned over sharing that information with competitors.
“If you have a particular lease from the state of Florida, and let’s say you have a particularly hot lease where it’s producing lots and lots of shellfish, oysters, things like that, when you file these documents, that’s a ready-made road map for somebody to pick them up and look at it and say, ‘Why don’t I just go over there tomorrow afternoon and harvest some oysters myself.’” Gentry said. “The other reason why this is held quietly and without access to the public is because they found difficulty with the fishermen actually disclosing this information because they knew what was going to happen.”
Exemptions to the Open Government Sunset Review Act expire every five years, and the aquaculture exemption was set to sunset in October 2026. The new law, which was signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on 28 March, ensures the public records exemption will stay in place.
