Chinese seafood exporters have been warned by the country’s seafood industry lobby against exporting seafood to the U.S. that contravenes the Marine Mammals Protection Act.
The warning was issued after the U.S. embassy in Beijing sent a letter to the Fisheries Bureau at China’s Agriculture Ministry with a reminder of a stipulation introduced in 2017 that requires overseas suppliers to be in compliance with the act – first introduced in 1972 – which previously applied only to U.S. fishing companies.
A note from China Aquatic Products Processing and Marketing Alliance (CAPPMA) to its members said, on 9 March, it became illegal for U.S. companies to import fishery products that contravene the act, and provided a list of species impacted: shrimp, corvina, sierra, chano, herring, sardines, mackerel, croaker, and pilchard. A list of species is compiled each year by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) based on fisheries where sea mammals have been endangered by fishing vessels. In its note, CAPPMA urged exporters with questions or those looking for advice to contact CAPPMA.
The new rule, introduced in 2017, levels the playing field for U.S. fishermen by requiring fisheries exporting seafood to the United States to protect marine mammals at standards comparable to those required for American fisheries.
“By 1 January, 2022, a harvesting nation must apply for and receive a comparability finding for each of its export and exempt fisheries on the list to continue to export fish and fish products from those fisheries to the United States,” according to a statement from NOAA.
While Chinese exporters rely on exports to the U.S. for farmed shrimp and tilapia, it is China’s distant-water fleet that could be most impacted by the new provisions of the Marine Mammals Protection Act. China’s distant-water vessels are playing an increasingly dominant role in global fishing and the U.S. has become more reliant on their products in recent years.
This isn’t the first move made by the U.S. to hold Chinese seafood firms to standards placed on their American counterparts. Earlier this year, the Southern Shrimp Alliance successfully petitioned to have Chinese wild-caught shrimp banned from being imported to the United States, citing their misrepresentation of farmed shrimp as wild in order to get around the Food and Drug Administration's scrutiny of farmed product. The State Department certifies shrimp imports (under so called Section 609) as being artisanal and not damaging to wild sea turtle populations, which have shrunk globally due in part to heavy trawling.
Yet China has quickly shifted into from being an exporter to an importer of seafood. China’s shrimp shrimp exports to American buyers fell 60 percent in 2019, and China ranked seventh in overall shrimp exports to the U.S. last year with 20,000 metric tons (MT), far behind first-ranked India, which exported 220,000 MT of shrimp to the U.S.. Most wild-caught shrimp in China are consumed domestically.
Photo courtesy of akemontree/Shutterstock
