Saving Seafood

Trump plans tariff pause, threatens higher tariffs on BRICS countries, South Korea, and Japan

July 7, 2025 — U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to add an additional 10 percent tariff to any country aligned with BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) and then later threatened 25 percent tariffs as of 1 August on China, South Korea, and Japan, just before the White house announced his intention to extend the “liberation day” tariff pause to 1 August.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told media on 7 July that Trump was planning to sign an order to extend the pause on the steepest tariffs until 1 August. She also said Trump was planning to send letters to other countries about the new rates they would face if they did not negotiate new deals with the U.S.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Seafood industry raises alarms about foreign subsidies

June 5, 2025 — On Wednesday, Russia was accused of subsidizing their seafood industry and exporting farm-raised, mislabeled salmon – an accusation levied by other seafood producers against countries such as India, Vietnam, and China.

The accusation came at Wednesday’s meeting of the U.S. House Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries.

The meeting was held in response to an executive order issued in April by President Donald Trump titled Restoring America’s Seafood Competitiveness.

“In the case of Russia, for instance, not only are they flooding global markets with hatchery-produced salmon, it is also often mislabeled,” Jamie O’Connor, deputy executive director of the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, told the committee. “And so we are operating in the best faith that we can as small businesses to compete in a vast global market. And we need your help to do that.”

Read the full article at The Center Square

Experts warn logistics industry stakeholders to make contingency plans

March 10, 2025 — In their March 2025 forecasts, shipping and logistics experts are warning those who rely on the industry to expect continued disruption, and in order to survive a chaotic landscape, they are advising businesses to spend money conservatively, work with trusted partners, and make comprehensive contingency plans.

“In the face of uncertainty, what else do you do? You just hold off on major investments you are going to make,” Sunderesh Heragu, a professor at Oklahoma State Univesity and the president-elect of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers, told SeafoodSource. “If you have the capacity to adapt, by all means, go ahead and do it.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Southern Shrimp Alliance echoes US congressman’s calls for tariffs on foreign seafood

February 13, 2025 — U.S. Representative Clay Higgins (R-Louisiana) recently sent a letter to the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump that offered simple advice on Trump’s tariff policies: To save American seafood, tax imports from China, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. 

Higgins shared the letter he sent to the president on social media platform X with the caption, “Protecting the American seafood industry requires aggressive action.”

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

The Shrimp on Your Table Has a Dark History

April 17, 2024 –A few months ago, along the coast of Andhra Pradesh in eastern India, Josh Farinella drove 40 minutes out of his way to visit workers who peel shrimp for Choice Canning, where he worked as a shrimp factory manager. He didn’t travel to the rural area for any of his job responsibilities; he was there to document injustice. He observed a crew of local women quickly peeling shrimp along rusty tables in 90-degree heat, wearing street clothes and flip-flops. They worked for long hours in a shed in a dirt field, far from the main work site, easily escaping the notice of auditors.

“These peeling sheds aren’t supposed to be there. They’re not supposed to be used by anybody,” Farinella told Civil Eats. “There are 20,000 pounds of shrimp per day going through these peeling sheds that are landing on U.S. grocery store shelves.” The high temperatures in the shed could easily lead to pathogen growth, he warned.

Farinella started his work for Choice Canning in 2015 at a production facility in his hometown of Pittston, Pennsylvania. In 2023, when the company offered him a high-paying managerial position at a new facility in Andhra Pradesh, he accepted. But four months into the job, he decided to come forward as a whistleblower, exposing what he says are the deplorable and unsanitary conditions in one of India’s largest shrimp manufacturers.

According to the company’s website, Choice Canning sells shrimp in more than 48,000 retail and food-service locations in the U.S. This includes major retailers like Walmart, Aldi, ShopRite, Hannaford, and HelloFresh, which advertise to consumers their commitments to sustainable seafood sourcing on their websites.

As Farinella was driving back to the town of Amalapuram, he recalled receiving a text from his wife with a photo of officers with machine guns outside their apartment. It was unusual timing. “It was one of those heart-beating-out-of-your-chest moments, like, does somebody know?” he said, worried that the company had caught on to his gathering dirt on its bad practices.

Soon after, Farinella quit his job, filed a complaint with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and flew back to the U.S. He took with him thousands of pages of documents, photographs, and videos, which have since been published by The Ocean Outlaw Project, alongside a vivid, reported account of his experiences at Choice Canning over the course of a few months of employment. According to the Project, this includes text messages that reveal that when Farinella informed the company’s vice president that shrimp had tested positive for antibiotics, which are banned in shrimp by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, he was told to “ship it” to the U.S. anyway.

Read the full article at Civil Eats

NFI Shares Seafood Industry Labor Principles Following India Shrimp Labor Abuse Reports

March 27, 2024 — Late last week, following the multiple reports on human rights and environmental abuse within India’s shrimp industry, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) Executive Committee of the Board of Directors adopted and shared the “Seafood Industry Labor Principles, A Commitment By NFI Members.”

“There is no place for labor abuse in the seafood supply chain,” the document reads. “Every worker should have freedom of movement and no worker should be coerced to work.”

The Associated Press, Outlaw Ocean Project, and Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL) all released reports last week exposing alleged labor abuse within India’s shrimp industry. Choice Canning Company, which has been exporting seafood products from India for the past 67 years, was named by a whistleblower in the report put out by Outlaw Ocean Project. According to the whistleblower, a 45-year-old American named Joshua Farinella, some Choice Canning workers were prohibited from leaving the facility. As general manager of Choice Canning’s plant six miles northeast of Amalapuram, Farinella also found himself covering up overcrowding when inspectors came, and even sending out shrimp that knowingly tested positive for antibiotics.

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com

Ecuador, India, Vietnam shrimp industries facing higher US countervailing duties

March 27, 2024 — The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) is planning to hit shrimp exporters in Ecuador, India, and Vietnam with higher countervailing duties once it posts its preliminary determinations to the Federal Register.

The DOC released its preliminary determinations on 26 March, finding the three countries, as well as individual companies in those countries, benefited from subsidies that gave them an unfair advantage in the U.S. market between 1 January and 31 December 2022.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

Southern Shrimp Alliance requests Indian shrimp be added to US Labor Department’s list of goods produced with forced labor

March 26, 2024 — The Southern Shrimp Alliance (SSA) has issued a formal request that Indian shrimp be added to the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2024 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.

The list is released annually, though the 2023 report has still not been issued. In the 2022 report, Taiwan, Thailand, China, Bangladesh, and Myanmar were called out for the alleged use of forced labor in their fishing or shrimp-processing sectors. In the 2020 report, Brazil, Cambodia, El Salvador, Kenya, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, Tanzania, Uganda, Vietnam, and Yemen were cited as having child labor present in their seafood industries, while countries listed as having forced labor in their seafood sectors included China, Taiwan, Thailand, Bangladesh, Ghana, and Indonesia.

Read the full article at SeafoodSource

6 Takeaways From The Indian Shrimp Labor Abuse Allegations By CAL, AP and Outlaw Ocean Project

March 25, 2024 — India is one of the largest producing countries of shrimp, exporting 653 million pounds to the U.S. alone in 2023, which represents 37.6% of imports. But now, the industry is facing some serious allegations. This week the Corporate Accountability Lab (CAL), the Associated Press (AP), and the Outlaw Ocean Project (OOP) have all accused India’s shrimp industry of human rights and environmental abuses.

On Wednesday CAL released their report titled “Hidden Harvest: Human Rights and Environmental Abuses in India’s Shrimp Industry.” The 97-page document, which is based on over 150 interviews with workers and other stakeholders, sheds light on abusive conditions, forced labor, environmental harms and certification schemes.

“Human rights and environmental abuses in global shrimp aquaculture have been documented for over a decade,” the press release from CAL explains. “Yet, India— despite its huge market share—has remained under the radar. Indian shrimp have been considered a “low-risk” source, even with telltale signs of abuse. CAL’s multi-year field investigations and interviews provide some of the first documentation of the widespread abusive and dangerous labor and environmental practices in the Indian shrimp sector—including shrimp products certified to be socially and environmentally responsible by the industry’s largest certification programs.”

Read the full article at Seafoodnews.com