Maryland State Wire

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), joined Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), in writing a bipartisan letter to U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere Richard Spinrad, and National Marine Fisheries Service Janet Coit, pushing for a revised proposed rule to the Seafood Import Monitoring Plan (SIMP) current proposal to tackle Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing.

Joining Cardin and Merkley in this letter are Senators Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Edward J. Markey (D-Mass/), and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

IUU fishing depletes marine species, destroys ocean habitats, and enables forced labor and human rights abuses around the world. Quality, safety, and health implications of fraudulent seafood not only directly undercut U.S seafood offerings, but can also have negative impacts on the reputation of lawfully-harvested fish.

“As the United States is the world’s largest seafood-importing country, we have both the purchasing power and the responsibility to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and human rights abuses in the fishing industry,” wrote the lawmakers. “We request that NOAA issue a revised proposed rule because of the lack of interagency and stakeholder consultation, the failure to disclose the method used for additional species selection, and the failure to meet the requirements of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the National Security Memorandum on Combating IUU Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses (NSM-11).”

The letter cites how 70-80 percent of U.S. seafood imports are caught outside of U.S. water and almost 55 percent of the seafood Americans consume fails to meet traceability requirements that certifies where the fish was originally caught. This reality makes the U.S. complicit in the depletion of fish and other marine species, the degradation of ocean habitats, and the enabling of labor abuses. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) bears responsibility for ensuring the U.S. has a robust seafood traceability program, and the letter urges its National Marine Fisheries Service to issue a supplemental proposed rule to protect fishers, their communities, and U.S. commerce.

The Biden administration’s NSM-11 directs the United States to “combat abuses and to strengthen incentives for ethical behavior in the global seafood industry, including by limiting the market for products derived from IUU fishing, labor abuses, or other abusive labor practices.” NSM-11 directs agencies to collaborate with multilateral organizations, and regional fisheries management organizations to create guidelines for social responsibility in fisheries, while simultaneously recognizing the role of individual import markets to combat IUU fishing and to include additional species groups. The White House also disclosed that NOAA would issue a proposed rule to the International Fisheries Regulations to enhance its ability to address both IUU fishing and labor abuses in the seafood supply chain.

The letter also shines a light on how the current proposed SIMP rule fails to suggest an integrated approach to combatting both IUU fishing and labor abuses. In order to ensure only legal, sustainable, and responsibly-harvested seafood enters the market, the letter encourages the agencies to work in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Labor, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, and other agencies to recognize and adequately address labor abuses in the seafood sector.

“Quality, safety, or health implications of fraudulent seafood not only directly undercut the U.S.’s seafood offerings, but also can affect the reputation of legitimate fish and fish products, causing further indirect effects to the fish-based economic sector,” the lawmakers conclude. “NMFS must strengthen and expand SIMP, which falls in line with their counter-IUU fishing efforts to help U.S. fishermen.”

Full text of the letter can be found here and follows below:

Dear Secretary Raimondo, Under Secretary Spinrad, and Assistant Administrator Coit:

As the United States is the world’s largest seafood-importing country, we have both the purchasing power and the responsibility to tackle illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing and human rights abuses in the fishing industry. We are writing to express our concern about the proposed rule to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on December 28, 2022.[1] We request that NOAA issue a revised proposed rule because of the lack of interagency and stakeholder consultation, the failure to disclose the method used for additional species selection, and the failure to meet the requirements of the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and the National Security Memorandum on Combating IUU Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses (NSM-11).

Seafood is a valuable source of nutrition in our diet, and fisheries and seafood businesses are a vital source of economic strength for U.S. coastal communities. However, the U.S. imports between 70% and 85% of our seafood, much of which is caught through IUU fishing outside of U.S. waters. With nearly 55% of the seafood Americans eat failing to meet traceability requirements, the U.S is complicit in depleting fish and other marine species, destroying ocean habitat, and enabling labor abuses. Further, the International Trade Commission has concluded that eliminating IUU imports “would increase total operating income of the U.S. commercial fishing industry by an estimated $60.8 million.”[2] Protecting U.S. fishers and their communities is a key way NOAA can support U.S. commerce. As NOAA is responsible for ensuring that the U.S. has an effective seafood traceability program, we urge the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to issue a supplemental proposed rule that meets specific goals described further below.

President Biden’s National Security Memorandum on Combating IUU Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses (NSM-11) directs that the United States “combat abuses and to strengthen incentives for ethical behavior in the global seafood industry, including by limiting the market for products derived from IUU fishing, labor abuses, or other abusive labor practices.”[3] NSM-11 directs agencies to collaborate with multilateral organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Labor Organization, and regional fisheries management organizations to create guidelines for social responsibility in fisheries, while also recognizing the role of individual import markets to combat IUU fishing and calling on NOAA to expand SIMP to include additional species groups. The White House also disclosed that NOAA would issue a proposed rule to the International Fisheries Regulations to enhance its ability to address both IUU fishing and labor abuses in the seafood supply chain.

The proposed rule is far too narrow in scope and fails to meet the goals set out in the NSM-11. As SIMP currently only requires catch documentation and traceability for approximately 45% of seafood imports, there is a need to include all imported seafood according to the U.S. government’s intent.[4] The proposed rule would only incorporate a short list of six species groups and two expanded groups, representing merely a 5 – 10% increase in SIMP’s coverage by volume. Although NMFS built on its original seven principles to identify species at risk, the agency failed to apply these selection criteria across all species. In selecting at-risk species, NOAA omits many that should qualify, including high risk species groups such as blue swimming crab, snow crab, salmon, and pollock. Without catch documentation and traceability requirements for all seafood, IUU-derived and fraudulently labeled products will continue to enter U.S. markets.

Even though the prevalence of labor abuses in IUU fishing is well-documented,[5] the proposed SIMP rule does not suggest an integrated approach to combating both IUU fishing and labor abuses. Hence, it also fails to address the priorities of the Collaborative Accelerator for Lawful Maritime Conditions in Seafood (CALM-Cs) initiative, which is objective three of the National 5-Year Strategy to ensure that only legal, sustainable, and responsibly harvested seafood enters trade. We encourage you to work in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Labor, the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, and other agencies to formally recognize labor abuses as one of several overlapping risk criteria for IUU seafood imports and to adequately address labor abuses in the seafood sector.

Furthermore, we note that the proposed rule’s lack of transparency and interagency coordination in the rulemaking process is inconsistent with the transparent whole-of-government approach championed by the Biden Administration. Many of the concerns we have raised above could have been addressed had NMFS issued a notice of proposed rulemaking for public input. Public process and interagency review are critical opportunities that NMFS overlooked in its scoping process, and we recommend that you issue a revised proposed rule.

Finally, as the FY23 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) enacted new requirements for addressing IUU fishing at the end of 2022, NMFS must consider revising the proposed rule accordingly. The NDAA includes a prohibition on SIMP aggregated harvest reports for imports of Northern red snapper and targeted improvements to NMFS’s SIMP audit procedures.[6]

We urge you to address these shortcomings by revising the proposed rule to better address the severity of the IUU fishing crisis, which, again, is a significant threat to ocean health, and contributes to overfishing and the decline of fisheries critical to economic growth and to food systems globally. A revised proposed rule should account for goals in the NSM-11 and 5-Year Strategy with a roadmap to expand SIMP by requiring traceability of all seafood imports as major markets, such as the European Union, already do. And it should explicitly address the labor abuses in IUU fishing. We also suggest that the revised proposed rule identify how NOAA will collaborate with other agencies and conduct a public review process.

Quality, safety, or health implications of fraudulent seafood not only directly undercut the U.S.’s seafood offerings, but also can affect the reputation of legitimate fish and fish products, causing further indirect effects to the fish-based economic sector. NMFS must strengthen and expand SIMP, which falls in line with their counter-IUU fishing efforts to help U.S. fishermen, yet the proposed rule fails to do so. Thank you for your efforts in addressing these crises. We look forward to discussing ways to strengthen U.S. leadership on this critical topic.

Sincerely,

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[1] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Seafood Import Monitoring Program Proposed Rule, 87 Fed.

Reg. 79,836 (Dec. 28, 2022), https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/12/28/2022-27741/magnuson-stevensfishery-conservation-and-management-act-seafood-import-monitoring-program

[2] U.S. International Trade Commission, Seafood Obtained Via Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing: U.S. Imports and Economic Impact on U.S. Commercial Fisheries (2021). https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/pub5168.pdf

[3] Memorandum on Combating Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Associated Labor Abuses, June 27,

2022, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/06/27/memorandum-on-combatingillegalunreported-and-unregulated-fishing-and-associated-labor-abuses/

[4] Presidential Task Force (2015) Presidential Task Force on Combating IUU Fishing and Seafood Fraud. p.44.

[5] UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Transnational Organized Crime in the Fishing Industry – Focus on: Trafficking in Persons Smuggling of Migrants Illicit Drugs Trafficking (2011), https://www.unodc.org/documents/human-trafficking/Issue_Paper_-_TOC_in_the_Fishing_Industry.pdf; Environmental Justice Foundation, Blood and Water: Human Rights Abuse in the Global Seafood Industry (2019),  https://ejfoundation.org/resources/downloads/Blood-water-06-2019-final.pdf.

[6] James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, Public Law 117-263 (117th Congress)

Original source can be found here.