The U.S. Senate is considering legislation that would ban the U.S. Department of Defense from purchasing Chinese seafood for its commissaries and military dining facilities.
The Senate version of the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act – annual legislation authorizing funding for the U.S. military – includes a provision that would, if passed, prohibit the military from serving or selling Chinese seafood and aquaculture products.
Exceptions to the ban would be allowed in cases of “undue burden” and for vessels at foreign ports at the secretary of defense’s discretion.
The Senate Committee on Armed Services approved the legislation on 15 July, but it still needs to be passed by the full Senate and align with the House version of the bill before becoming law. A similar provision was included in the Senate’s initial draft of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, but it was dropped from the final bill that was passed into law. According to Roll Call, the language was initially introduced by U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-Florida), U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), and U.S. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Mississippi).
If the military budget bill passes with the Chinese seafood ban intact, it would go into effect 90 days after it is enacted.
Several U.S. lawmakers have pushed to limit or outright ban seafood imports from China.
In 2023, the Senate passed an amendment submitted by U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) banning the purchase of Russian or Chinese seafood for the country's National School Lunch Program.
“In 2018, we fought for and delivered a ‘Buy American’ provision in the Farm Bill to give our students fresh, delicious, sustainable seafood caught by American fishermen,” Sullivan said at the time. “Unfortunately, a loophole allows National School Lunch Program purchasers to keep buying foreign fish – possibly even Russian-sourced fish breaded and pumped with phosphates in China that we thought we’d already banned – if they can demonstrate it saves even 1 percent of the cost relative to domestic fish. This has to end once and for all.”
Sullivan worked with former U.S. President Joe Biden to prohibit Russian seafood that had been processed in China – a loophole that had allowed Russian seafood suppliers to partially circumnavigate the U.S. ban on Russian seafood.
Legislators have also attempted to ban all Chinese seafood products outright.
Following the Outlaw Ocean Project’s extensive reporting on labor abuse within the Chinese fishing fleet and its domestic seafood processing sector, some U.S. senators tried to block all Chinese seafood imports. Among other allegations, the project’s reporting showed the use of North Korean labor at Chinese seafood processors, systematic abuse at many processing companies, and unethical working conditions on China’s distant water fishing fleet.
In response, Hyde-Smith, Cotton, and Scott introduced the Ban China’s Forbidden Operations in the Oceanic Domain (Ban C-FOOD) Act.
“Communist China, under Xi’s murderous regime, is on a quest for global domination, building economic power in industries like seafood and aquaculture that are known to use slave labor and other illegal, unreported, and unregulated practices that are pushing American businesses out of business in the process. I’m proud to join my colleagues on this legislation to ban the importation of these goods from Communist China and hold any nation attempting to circumvent U.S. trade laws fully accountable,” Scott said in a statement.
The original Ban C-FOOD Act would also have directed the secretary of the treasury to impose sanctions and duties on those involved in the transshipment of Chinese seafood and aquaculture products and would have required a report on combating China’s “abuses of fishing fleets and aquaculture industry.”
The legislation was never brought up for a vote in the Senate.
