Protect Seafood Traceability

We need to know what’s on our dinner plate — and how it got there.

The United States is one of the world’s largest seafood importers, but much of the seafood we eat still isn’t traceable back to where and how it was caught. Right now, seafood traceability requirements apply to less than half of imported seafood, leaving major gaps that bad actors can exploit. That means your child’s fish sticks or the crab cakes at your favorite restaurant could be tied to illegal fishing, seafood fraud, or even human rights abuses at sea.

The good news: Congress recently funded a critical program that helps stop illegal and fraudulently labeled seafood from entering the United States. This is a major win worth celebrating.

But we can’t stop there. Not only do we need to expand seafood traceability to include all seafood, but we must also increase funding to modernize the technology used to operate this crucial program so we can better stop illegally caught seafood from landing on our plates.

Your voice has already made an enormous difference. Let’s ride the wave and keep up the fight!

Use your voice and urge your U.S. lawmakers to increase funding for seafood traceability so we can help stop the plundering of our oceans.

petition text

Dear {contact_data~salutation},

I am writing to request continued support in the FY27 Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill for seafood traceability to help stop seafood fraud and illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing via the Seafood Import Monitoring Program.

Seafood fraud and IUU fishing undercut hardworking American fishermen and undermine national security. The United States needs to level the playing field, so our fishermen do not have to compete against cheap imports caught by illicit means and forced labor. Not knowing where seafood imports are coming from, or through what means, severely undercuts consumer confidence when Americans make seafood purchasing decisions. According to a Gallup poll, in 2024 Americans’ confidence in the government’s ability to protect the food supply dropped to a record low of 57%.

Americans have a right to know more about the seafood we eat and should have confidence that our purchases do not support the destruction of the ocean or human rights abuses at sea. In 2019 alone, the U.S. imported an estimated $2.4 billion worth of seafood that were products of IUU fishing, making up approximately 11% of seafood imports.

Fortunately, the U.S. has had a tool in place since 2016 to prevent IUU fishing products from entering U.S. markets: the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). Under this program, catch documentation is required for certain species to show it came from a legal fishing and the seafood is traced from the boat (or aquaculture farm) to the U.S. border. While SIMP covers only 13 species groups currently, making up less than 40% of seafood imports by volume, the program was always intended to eventually cover 100% of seafood imports.

In 2024, the National and Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released an Action Plan to improve the program after an extensive year of feedback from more than 7,000 stakeholders, ranging from seafood business owners, the shipping industry, and NGOs to government agencies and the public. In this Action Plan, NOAA proposes an expansion of traceability requirements to all species, pre-screening in advance of products entering U.S. markets, the collection of data to address forced labor at sea, and more. The Action Plan also proposes to accelerate the deployment of a critical tool for identifying seafood imports from IUU sources: the Global Seafood Data System (GSDS). This effort will use modern data techniques to improve how seafood import data is processed, analyzed, and audited.

The SIMP Action Plan has not been implemented yet, and SIMP is now reaching its tenth anniversary. It is high time for our seafood to be safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced, and honestly labeled. To do so, I ask you to support $10 million in funding for the Seafood Import Monitoring Program for the coming year (FY2027), and to urge NOAA to fully implement the SIMP Action Plan utilizing the Global Seafood Data System. Thank you for considering my views.

Sincerely,

{user_data~First Name} {user_data~Last Name}

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