Saving Seafood

ALASKA: Alaska congressional delegation steps up efforts to shut down U.S. imports of Russian seafood processed in China

December 19, 2023 — At the Yantai Sanko Fisheries shore plant in China’s Shandong Province, workers cut pollock into trim fillets. The company website touts “perfect quality” from a plant complex with easy access to international shipping lines.

The vast majority of pollock that moves through China’s seafood processing industry comes from Russia, which is prohibited by the Biden administration’s March 2022 sanctions from exporting seafood directly to the United States. But Russian-caught fish labeled as a product of China has continued to pour into U.S. markets, helping to tank what had been record-high prices for the North Pacific trawl fleet that catches pollock off Alaska.

For more than a year, Alaska seafood industry officials have called for expanding the sanctions to cover any Russian seafood processed in China or any other country. In recent weeks, Alaska’s congressional delegation has stepped up efforts to try to make that happen.

Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, has repeatedly asked Treasury Department officials for a new ruling that would reinterpret the sanctions imposed in the aftermath of the invasion of Ukraine to cover all Russia-caught seafood, no matter where it was processed. Rep. Mary Peltola took a lead role in putting together a letter, signed by 38 members of Congress, sent Thursday to President Joe Biden. It asks for the closure of the “loophole” that allows Russian seafood processed in China to be imported into the United States “in defiance of U.S. sanctions.”

If the Treasury Department does not act, Sullivan says he’s planning another attempt to pass legislation that would require the Biden administration to end these imports. He would try to move a bill through the Senate through a unanimous consent vote, a tactic he tried unsuccessfully in June.

“I have been having a tough time getting this over the goal line. We’ve been working this nonstop,” Sullivan said. “Stay tuned.”

This campaign to clamp down on Russian-caught imports has gained momentum from an investigation by The Outlaw Ocean Project — a journalism nonprofit — into the Chinese seafood industry. The reporting, published by The New Yorker in October, found evidence that Yantai Sanko and nine other seafood companies have used the forced labor of more than 1,000 Uyghurs and other largely Muslim minorities from the Xinjiang region in northwest China.

Read the full article at Anchorage Daily News

US Senator Tom Cotton introduces bill to ban Chinese seafood imports

December 7, 2023 — U.S. Senator Tom Cotton has introduced legislation that would ban the import of seafood and aquaculture products from China.

“Fishing and aquaculture is yet another industry the Chinese Communist Party is weaponizing for their own gain through blatant abuse and slave labor. This legislation will stop imports of this illicit seafood by imposing real costs on the Chinese government and the companies that aid them,” Cotton said in a statement.

Read the full story at SeafoodSource

 

Fleets of Force

November 18, 2023 — Beijing says many of these boats are just fishing. But they bristle with machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and high-velocity water cannons. They’re here for intimidation

This fleet, built largely with government money, helps China dominate one of the most crucial and disputed waterways in the world: the South China Sea.

Working in tandem with an aggressive coast guard, these militarized fishing boats assert Beijing’s presence more than 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland.

The boats patrol the tiny, disputed Spratly islets. Their reinforced steel hulls make it easy to ram smaller boats. They swarm other countries’ outposts and squat on shoals within sight of foreign coastlines.

In confrontations with China’s militarized fleet, like this one on Oct. 22, the Philippines’ smaller boats don’t stand a chance. China’s muscle is crucial to its de facto control over the South China Sea.

Read the full article at the New York Times

China leads list of labor abusers, sometimes akin to slavery, detected on fishing vessels worldwide

November 15, 2023 — Hazardous, forced work conditions sometimes akin to slavery have been detected on nearly 500 industrial fishing vessels around the world, but identifying those responsible for abuses at sea is hampered by a lack of transparency and regulatory oversight, a new report concluded.

The research by the Financial Transparency Coalition, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization that tracks illicit money flows, is the most comprehensive attempt to date to identify the companies operating vessels where tens of thousands of workers every year are estimated to be trapped in unsafe conditions.

The report, published Wednesday, found that a quarter of vessels suspected of abusing workers are flagged to China, whose distant water fleet dominates fishing on the high seas, traditionally lawless areas beyond the jurisdiction of any single country. Vessels from Russia, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan and South Korea were also accused of mistreatment of fishers.

Read the full article at the Associated Press

Global blue food production at risk from human-caused environmental changes, study finds

November 3, 2023 — Over 90 percent of global blue food production faces substantial risks from environmental changes, with leading seafood-producing countries – including China, Norway, and the U.S. – running the highest risks, according to a new study.

Published in the scientific journal Nature Sustainability, the study, “Vulnerability of blue foods to human-induced environmental change,” included a global analysis assessing the vulnerability of countries’ fisheries and aquaculture production in the face of anthropogenic impacts, or environmental changes directly caused by human activities. Specifically, anthropogenic threats can reduce the amount of high-quality blue food countries can produce by altering water quality and habitats, causing shifts or declines in stocks, and compromising food safety by contaminating fish with pathogens or pollutants that are toxic for human consumption.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Chinese authorities castigate Outlaw Ocean report, as US lawyers advise importers to scrutinize Chinese products

November 2, 2023 — China is requiring its entire distant-water fleet to implement electronic monitoring on its ships from 2024 onward, according to a new government whitepaper that comes soon after the release of a bombshell Outlaw Ocean report focusing on alleged worker abuses that occurred on some of the nation’s distant-water trawlers.

The report links specific Chinese processing companies to state-run labor programs that have subjected the Uyghur ethnic minority group to what the U.S. government has labeled as illegal forced labor.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The US is buying up the Japanese seafood exports that China banned—but for how long?

October 31, 2023 — The US military is helping Tokyo curb the economic fallout from China’s ban on seafood products from Japan.

Right after Japan started releasing treated wastewater from the Fukushima nuclear plant in late August, China halted seafood exports from the country. It cited food safety fears from damage to the environment and marine life—a concern dismissed by regulators after thorough investigation. (Never mind that Chinese vessels kept fishing in the same waters.)

The US military stationed in Japan has started bulk-buying Japanese seafood to feed soldiers in messes and aboard vessels, and to sell in shops and restaurants on bases, Rahm Emanuel, US ambassador to the country, told Reuters in an interview yesterday (Oct. 30). It’s the first time the US armed forces have bought Japanese fish.

A “long-term contract” has been established between the US military and fisheries and co-ops in Japan, Emanuel said. Washington’s strategy to “wear out China’s economic coercion is [to] come to the aid and assistance of the targeted country or industry,” he added, harking back to his September speech in which he called economic coercion “the most persistent and pernicious tool” in China’s economic toolbox.

This may be a clever diplomatic move, but it’s unclear how sustainable it is. The total release of all the wastewater from Fukushima could take up to 40 years. Would China really keep a ban in place for four decades? And would the US keep coming to Japan’s aid for all that time?

Read the full article at Quartz

 

American Shrimp Processors Association push for duties on imported shrimp from four countries

October 26, 2023 — The American Shrimp Processors Association (ASPA), an organization representing the interests of U.S. wild-caught warmwater shrimp processing, has filed trade petitions seeking additional antidumping and countervailing duties on imported shrimp.

The trade petitions, which the ASPA said are intended to address unfair dumping and illegal subsidies, consist of a request for antidumping duties on imported frozen warmwater shrimp from Ecuador and Indonesia, and countervailing duties on imported shrimp from Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Social audits for MSC, ASC, BRC certification likely missed evidence of Uyghur forced labor

October 16, 2023 — A weak social auditing process, including heavy reliance on self-assessments, allowed the presence of Uyghurs in Chinese seafood processing facilities to go undetected by seafood certification nonprofits including the Marine Stewardship Council, the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, and the British Retail Consortium, according to a report from The Outlaw Ocean Project.

The independent journalism group published a report in The New Yorker on 9 October outlining its investigation into the use of state-sponsored forced labor, as defined by the U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act of 2021, in 11 Chinese seafood processing plants, most of which carried the joint MSC/ASC chain of custody certification.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Lund’s Fisheries, PAFCO cease business with Chinese processors named in Outlaw Ocean report

October 15, 2023 — Cape May, New Jersey, U.S.A.-based Lund’s Fisheries has ceased its business relationship with a Chinese supplier in the wake of a report by the Outlaw Ocean Project on the use of Uyghur laborers at seafood companies in China.

Lund’s Fisheries, in a statement released on 13 October, said that upon hearing questions and criticisms about Rongcheng Haibo – one of several Chinese companies named by the Outlaw Ocean Project in its report – it initiated an internal investigation and “resolved not to renew existing contracts with Rongcheng Haibo until that work was complete.” Now, although the company said it did not find any evidence of illegal activity or forced labor at Rongcheng Haibo, the company will continue to maintain the cessation of new business “pending further investigation.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource