U.S. seafood organizations are coming together to call for reform to the European Union's CATCH digital traceability system, citing unnecessary barriers it creates across the supply chain.
Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.-based nonprofit organization Pacific Seafood Processors Association (PSPA); Juneau, Alaska, U.S.A.-based marketing institute Alaska Seafood Marketing Institute (ASMI); and Seattle, Washington, U.S.A and Juneau, Alaska, U.S.A.-based trade association At-sea Processors Association (APA) came together to release a whitepaper titled "Advancing EU Efforts to Combat IUU Fishing: Why CATCH Needs Reforms."
The 20-page whitepaper was released 1 September 2026 and details concerns the organizations have with the traceability effort, which was created to crack down on illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
“European seafood businesses fully support the fight against IUU fishing, but CATCH must be workable in practice,” Seafood Europe Secretary General Katarina Sipic said in the release. “When legitimate seafood is delayed or held because documentation requirements do not reflect how modern fisheries operate, the consequences are felt by European businesses and consumers as well as international suppliers.”
The E.U. Catch system aims to crack down on IUU fishing products being imported into the E.U. by requiring digital documentation of fish from the moment they are harvested, ensuring importers can instantly see when, where, and how a fish was caught and its subsequent journey through the supply chain. However, seafood importers and exporters have raised issues with the system’s implementation, noting that it doesn’t always align with how fisheries operate. In the U.S., and in the Alaska salmon sector specifically, CATCH requirements don’t work with the way smaller tender vessels aggregate harvests from multiple vessels before delivering them to processors. Similar concerns were highlighted at Seafood Expo North America 15-17 March in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Though CATCH was supposed to go into effect for U.S. exporters in July, the E.U. extended the CATCH certification deadline until 30 November 2026. Still, organizations like ASMI, At-sea Processors, PSPA, and the National Seafood Association say changes must be made to avoid unnecessary and costly complications.
“We share the European Union’s goal of preventing IUU fishing and ensuring that seafood entering the European market is legally harvested," PSPA President Julie Decker said in an ASMI release. "But CATCH needs to reflect how seafood is actually harvested, processed and marketed. We want CATCH to succeed, but the current system is imposing enormous costs on legitimate businesses without meaningfully improving the ability to identify IUU product.”
The main concerns highlighted in the whitepaper are inflexibility for comingled fisheries products, such as Alaska salmon, the unreliability of using weight data from harvest to identify IUU, and the high costs of “unworkable data requirements.” These three issues have created a pattern of CATCH inaccurately identifying IUU fishing, the organizations said.
“These are not theoretical concerns,” ASMI Executive Director Jeremy Woodrow said in a release. “When thousands of tons of legally harvested seafood are sitting in storage and businesses face significant additional costs, it is clear that implementation needs to be improved. The E.U. must establish a better system that protects the integrity of the seafood supply chain without unnecessarily restricting lawful seafood trade.”
After the whitepaper was released, Reston, Virginia, U.S.A.-based industry group National Seafood Association joined the three organizations in calls for reform.
“IUU product has no place in the seafood supply chain. American companies are proud of our dedication to this principal,” National Seafood Association President and CEO Lisa Wallenda Picard said in the release. “The current E.U. Catch system punishes years of efforts to curtail seafood harvested outside of this commitment. The concerns are shared by European seafood businesses that depend on reliable international supply chains.”
The three organizations made three suggestions for change. The first recommendation is to align traceability requirements with both fisheries and governments to ensure proper documentation, licensing, stock and catch management, monitoring, and enforcement are in place. Within this call, the organizations said government entities should examine which control methods are effective at enforcing traceability and encourage well-managed fisheries to continue self-sufficiency in data reporting.
The second call is to address structural issues within the program regarding permit aggregation, processing statement requirements, and building system interoperability with standardized data reporting. Finally, the three organizations asked to collaborate with the program on IUU catch measures through a formal E.U.-U.S. government and industry working group. This would allow for trial and error as well as industry input across every chain of the sector, the groups said. This especially will come into play with the detainment of product, which the three organizations highlighted as a concern through a case study.
According to the ASMI release, approximately 16,000 metric tons of Alaskan seafood was affected by documentation issues across two shipments going to the Netherlands, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in direct costs for the Alaskan logistics company and participating U.S. seafood companies. An additional case involved 600 metric tons of U.S. seafood in Denmark being held due to CATCH documentation issues.
“The Alaska seafood industry has invested heavily in monitoring, enforcement, and responsible fisheries management. CATCH should recognize those systems rather than create unnecessary duplication,” At-sea Processors Association CEO Matt Tinning said. “The objective should be better detection of illegal seafood, not simply more paperwork for legal seafood.”
“This is ultimately about getting the system right,” Decker said. “We want to work with the European Commission, Member States and U.S. agencies to build a CATCH system that actually helps identify IUU seafood while allowing legitimate seafood to move efficiently through international markets.”
In February, Seafood Europe, the European Association of Fish Producer Organizations (EAPO), fishing body Europêche, and farming lobby group Copa-Cogeca made a similar call for reform. The European Union’s Market Advisory Council (MAC) has also documented challenges and issues with the rollout of the digital traceability system.
