Traceability, Targeting, and Transparency in U.S. Seafood Trade Programming - By Carolyn Gruber, Lily Schlieman, Noah Fritzhand, and Sally Yozell

Together, brokers and importers take seafood industry records about the seafood products and translate the information into specific data requirements to meet detailed needs of different federal trade programs across various government agencies including NOAA Fisheries, the Department of State, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). [...] Once an entity is identified, the NOAA Fisheries Office of International Affairs, Trade, and Commerce leads consultations with the entity’s government to encourage necessary measures to address the identified breaches of the HSDFMPA in advance of the next issuance of the Report to Congress. [...] In 2000, the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) implemented a CDS for toothfish to reduce the trade of illegally harvested toothfish.35 The CDS monitors the international trade of toothfish by tracking the origins of imports and determining if imports caught in the CCAMLR Convention Area follow CCAMLR conservation measures. [...] Certification that the harvest practices reduce sea turtle bycatch can occur in one of two ways: (1) the government of a harvesting nation provides evidence of a successful regulatory program that governs commercial shrimp trawl harvesting that is comparable to the program of the United States, and the average rate of the incidental taking of sea turtles by the vessels of that nation is therefore. [...] Existing seafood trade systems are not yet interoperable; the process for data collection (e.g., the forms required and the level of digitization) varies across programs and agencies; and the languages of each trade system (e.g., the formats, abbreviations, and units used to identify certain pieces of information) differ.