Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives included another year’s worth of money for the new Office of Seafood within the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in a fiscal year 2027 appropriations bill funding the department, along with other seafood provisions.
The bill includes several of the priorities and stipulations outlined in the fiscal year 2026 agriculture appropriations legislation, which was passed by Congress in November 2025 following a multi-week shutdown of the federal government.
That legislation established a seafood liaison within USDA, a longtime priority for the domestic seafood sector. The industry has pushed to elevate its presence within the department and secure some of the many benefits and financial services USDA offers to agriculture producers. Congress authorized USD 500,000 (EUR 433,090) for an office to support the new position, and in April, the department announced the creation of the Office of Seafood.
“For the first time ever, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will have an office and a team fully dedicated to advancing, honoring, elevating, and supporting our farmers of the sea,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said at the time. “I was a little startled that the USDA has never had an office for seafood; we’ve never had an advocate for all of the programs that are at the USDA.”
The House version of the fiscal year 2027 bill also designated USD 500,000 for the Office of Seafood. The Farm Bill, a separate omnibus agricultural policy bill, includes language that would codify the new office. The House passed a version of the Farm Bill in April 2026, but the Senate has yet to release its version.
The Appropriations Committee report on the fiscal year 2027 agricultural appropriations bill also includes several seafood-related directives for the federal government, including support for the domestic shrimp sector.
Following calls from Louisiana state lawmakers and a federal representative, the legislation calls on USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Services (AMS) to carry out more Section 32 purchases of shrimp and crawfish. Section 32 authorizes USDA to purchase surplus domestic food products to support the industry and utilize that food for school lunches and other federal nutrition programs.
“The Committee recognizes the economic importance of the domestic seafood industry, including shrimp and crawfish producers who face ongoing market pressures from unfair trade practices, fluctuating input costs, and natural disasters. The Committee encourages AMS to utilize available authorities under Section 32 to purchase domestically harvested and processed seafood products, including shrimp and crawfish, for distribution through nutrition assistance programs. The Committee further encourages USDA to prioritize purchases that support American fishermen, aquaculture producers, and associated processing industries while ensuring high-quality protein options are made available to schools, food banks, and other recipient outlets,” the committee stated in its report.
The committee further demanded a report on the use of waivers in the National School Lunch Program to evade “buy American” products when it comes to seafood and encouraged the government to prioritize local seafood in the program. The legislation specifies that no funding included within it can be used to purchase seafood from China for use in school lunch or breakfast programs. A similar stipulation was included in the fiscal year 2026 agriculture appropriations legislation.
As in appropriations bills filed in previous years, the Appropriations Committee expressed concern with the labeling of plant-based products as seafood or fish products, calling the practice “misleading, deceptive, and confusing to consumers.”
The committee also directed the government to look into a more appropriate market name for surimi, work with seafood processors to develop a label for marketing low-mercury seafood products, and devote more time to investigating short weighting on seafood labels.
Finally, the legislation includes a USD 10 million (EUR 8.7 million) increase for testing seafood imports.
The legislation passed narrowly in a 213 to 210 vote and will likely need to be reconciled with the U.S. Senate’s version of the fiscal year 2027 appropriations bill before being passed and sent on to the president to be signed into law. The Senate has yet to roll out its version of the bill; a scheduled 4 June markup of the legislation was canceled and has yet to be rescheduled.
