The $5.7 billion dollar U.S. industry built on the importation of foreign shrimp is not happy about a monitoring provision tucked away inside a pending federal budget bill, though the Gulf shrimp industry is all for it.
The provision, part of Senate Bill 1662, would remove a stay on including imported shrimp under the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), a new set of reporting and record-keeping requirements implemented by the National Marine Fisheries Service. SIMP is aimed at preventing illegal, unreported and unregulated-caught and/or misrepresented seafood from entering the U.S. market
Jan. 1, 2018, was the compliance deadline for 10 other species under SIMP, though shrimp and abalone were to be phased in later. The provision in S.B. 1662, if it takes effect, would give the U.S. import shrimp industry 30 days to prepare for the new reporting requirements. Imports represent 90 percent of the U.S. shrimp industry.
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