April 5, 2023 — The Stimson Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington, D.C., U.S.A.-based think-tank, is calling on NOAA to expand the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) beyond the current proposal offered by the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden.
SIMP was created six years ago to block the import of select seafood products that had been mislabeled or harvested through illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing. The program currently targets 11 species groups, but NOAA Fisheries announced a plan in January 2023 to expand the program and more than double the number of species it targets.