Last week, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) finished its 2014 Future Leaders program with a trip to Washington, D.C. and a lesson to the class members about lobbying.
Like all of the Future Leaders sessions, this was hands-on, with visits to real congressional offices to discuss NFI’s concerns about the presidential task force formed in June and assigned to explore Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices, along with combating seafood fraud and mislabeling.
The task force, which came out of the U.S. State Department’s Oceans Week meeting, is set to report to President Barack Obama in December. Little has been disclosed thus far on just what the task force’s mission will be. It’s prudent to reserve judgment on it until more details emerge, but NFI is taking a proactive stance and urging Congress to ask questions of the State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is also involved with the task force.
If it turns out the task force is seeking or plans to seek new regulations to protect against IUU fishing and/or seafood fraud, the NFI’s stance is that it would be a duplication of existing rules that lack sufficient enforcement. It would be a waste of time and money not just for the government, but also for the industry, which would inevitably have to spend more time and money complying with whatever new rules would emerge.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I took part in these discussions, but only to express opinions that I wouldn’t be afraid to express here: NFI is right on this one. There’s no question that IUU fishing and seafood fraud are both serious problems that require corrective action, and with more than 90 percent of the seafood we eat in the United States coming from abroad, the U.S. government is right to keep a close eye on where that seafood comes from and how it is produced.
The issue is whether we need a presidential task force to supplement what monitoring of the industry already exists, and I don’t think we do. Of the seafood that comes into this country, fully half comes from aquaculture, according to NOAA. Since it’s impossible to illegally fish from an aquaculture pen, that means fully half of the U.S. seafood imports won’t be touched by this task force.
The remainder is made up largely of tuna, which has its own collection of international monitoring organizations, such as the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna and related groups. Add in the stewardship of multiple American regulations such as the Magnuson-Stevens Act, the Lacey Act, country-of-origin labeling regulations and other rules, and NFI estimates that a whopping 11 percent of all seafood imported into the United States suffers from inadequate regulation.
Perhaps that needs to change, but it’s questionable whether a presidential task force is necessary to do it. More likely, if this task force does create or recommend creating new regulations, the new rules will overlap what already exists. Anyone who fears a bloated government should worry about this, but the seafood industry is particularly concerned. More than one member of the Future Leaders class told stories about the hoops they are already jumping through to comply with the rules that are in place now. Putting new rules in place will merely add an unfair and unnecessary burden.
As for seafood fraud, various NGOs will tell you it’s a problem, but that’s exactly why it doesn’t belong with this task force — it’s too big and complex an issue to be lumped in with IUU fishing, and once again, existing regulations are designed to handle the issue.
If they are not handling the issue, then the question is not whether we need more rules, but how can we better enforce the rules that exist? Addressing the latter question would be a much better use of the task force’s time, and like NFI, we would applaud the task force’s efforts if this is what they wind up focusing on. What we don’t need are more rules that make life harder for the industry but ultimately don’t fix the problem.
So if you don’t like the uncertainty that surrounds this task force, call your congressmen and ask them what they know. If they don’t know much, urge them to find out, lest you find yourself and your company wrapped up in more red tape.
