Seafood Traceability Practitioner’s Workshop Summary Report

Exploring Programs from Design to Implementation

The Stimson Center, NOAA, and WWF release the Summary Report from recent Workshop on the design, management, and implementation of seafood traceability programs.

The Seafood Traceability Practitioner’s Workshop brought together technical experts and officials from importing and exporting states, across U.S. government agencies, the seafood industry, and civil society for an open dialogue to identify best practices in seafood traceability to combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and keep IUU fish out of major market states. The expert participants raised numerous key issues to remove barriers and improve seafood traceability, including the need for adopting standardized, electronic data; increasing the interoperability of global seafood data tracking systems, and harmonizing the data collected in seafood import programs. Stimson looks forward to implementing the ideas discussed in the Workshop, in partnership with NOAA and WWF.

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The Stimson Center, NOAA Fisheries, and World Wildlife Fund (WWF) jointly released a Summary Report from the Seafood Traceability Practitioner’s Workshop convened on September 14-15, 2021. The Workshop’s theme was Exploring Programs from Design to Implementation. The event was designed to spark an open dialogue among experienced practitioners throughout the global seafood supply chain to identify best practices in seafood traceability to combat Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing and keep IUU catch out of major market states. The meeting brought together technical experts and officials from importing and exporting states, across U.S. government agencies, the seafood industry, and civil society to discuss the establishment, management, and implementation challenges facing seafood traceability programs around the world.

IUU fishing is one of the most significant threats to sustainable fisheries around the world, generating an estimated $20 billion a year and accounting for an estimated 20 to 50 percent of all global seafood catch. IUU fishing drives food and economic insecurity around the globe, as it can cause instability in coastal communities that rely on fisheries for their livelihood and diet while contributing to human rights and labor violations throughout the supply chain.

The U.S. is a major seafood market state, importing 90 percent of its seafood, and IUU catch constitutes a sizeable, and valuable, part of those imports. The U.S. International Trade Commission estimated that the U.S. imported an estimated $2.4 billion of seafood derived from IUU fishing in 2019, nearly 11% of total U.S. seafood imports.

In 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) launched the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), a risk-based traceability program designed to keep IUU fish out of the U.S. seafood market, stop seafood fraud, and level the playing field for honest fishers who comply with the rules. Strengthening SIMP and aligning the program with other major market seafood import schemes in the EU and Japan would result in close to 60 percent of global seafood imports meeting traceability standards throughout the seafood supply chain. If other major market states such as China, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, and the UK were to enact and implement similar seafood traceability programs, it would increase the percentage of the seafood markets closed to illegally catch fish.

The Workshop participants raised numerous key ideas to remove barriers and improve seafood traceability, including:

  • The need for adopting standardized, secure electronic data through the seafood supply chain to facilitate reporting requirements and improve enforcement against IUU fish imports.
  • Increased interoperability of seafood data tracking systems across platforms as more market states adopt new traceability schemes, data requirements, and increase data collection.
  • Seafood traceability programs can be more effective with harmonized key data elements (KDEs) across different market state platforms, as well as common understanding of the KDE requirements for catch documentation and traceability.
  • The importance of electronic data systems to ensure the integrity and accurate verification of catch and traceability data.
  • Traceability systems should adopt electronic catch documentation and move away from paper-based systems, which can be easily falsified.
  • Innovative technologies to manage and analyze big data should be used in seafood traceability including blockchain, which can verify and store data in an online platform, should be sought to help organize and best make use of the large amounts of data collected.

In addition, participants discussed the need to address human rights and forced labor abuses in the seafood sector, and their intersection with traceability schemes.

Environmental Security Program Director Sally Yozell said, “Being able to track seafood throughout the global seafood supply chain from where it is caught to when it enters the market will advance the international fight against illegal fishing and seafood fraud. No one wants to unknowingly purchase or consume seafood that is illegally caught, comes from an unmanaged fishery or is harvested using forced labor.

The Stimson Center was pleased to partner with NOAA Fisheries and WWF to convene the Seafood Traceability Practitioners’ Workshop, which brought together an array of seafood sector practitioners and experts for a frank and open discussion about how to stop illegally harvested seafood from entering markets around the world.

Experts shared ideas on ways to enhance global traceability through the use of technologies, big data analytics, improved global harmonization of seafood data, and use the information to improve enforcement. Stimson looks forward to implementing the ideas discussed in the Workshop. Stimson is also eager to partner with NOAA Fisheries and WWF to convene subsequent Workshops to continue the productive dialogue among a diverse, global array of seafood practitioners and experts.

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