September 23, 2014 — Last week, the National Fisheries Institute (NFI) finished its 2014 Future Leaders program with a trip to Washington, D.C. and a lesson to the class members about lobbying.
Like all of the Future Leaders sessions, this was hands-on, with visits to real congressional offices to discuss NFI’s concerns about the presidential task force formed in June and assigned to explore Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices, along with combating seafood fraud and mislabeling.
The task force, which came out of the U.S. State Department’s Oceans Week meeting, is set to report to President Barack Obama in December. Little has been disclosed thus far on just what the task force’s mission will be. It’s prudent to reserve judgment on it until more details emerge, but NFI is taking a proactive stance and urging Congress to ask questions of the State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is also involved with the task force.
If it turns out the task force is seeking or plans to seek new regulations to protect against IUU fishing and/or seafood fraud, the NFI’s stance is that it would be a duplication of existing rules that lack sufficient enforcement. It would be a waste of time and money not just for the government, but also for the industry, which would inevitably have to spend more time and money complying with whatever new rules would emerge.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I took part in these discussions, but only to express opinions that I wouldn’t be afraid to express here: NFI is right on this one. There’s no question that IUU fishing and seafood fraud are both serious problems that require corrective action, and with more than 90 percent of the seafood we eat in the United States coming from abroad, the U.S. government is right to keep a close eye on where that seafood comes from and how it is produced.