Shrimpers Demand Action on Turtle Conservation Standards
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The Port Arthur Area Shrimpers’ Association (“PAASA”) and the Southern Shrimp Alliance jointly requested that the U.S. Department of State (“State Department”) re-visit and suspend the certifications granted to Peru and Guatemala under Section 609 of Public Law 101-162.
Based on a law enacted in 1989, the Section 609 program is intended to ensure that shrimp harvested in a manner that harms endangered sea turtles is not imported into the United States. Under the program, the State Department, working with officials from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) Fisheries, certifies countries and/or individual fisheries as being in compliance with Section 609’s requirements and therefore eligible to supply the U.S. market with shrimp.
Despite its thirty-five year history, enforcement of the Section 609 program has been lax, with large volumes of wild-caught shrimp from nations without certifications imported into the United States each year. In order to better assess the extent to which this shrimp continued to enter the country, the Southern Shrimp Alliance petitioned the federal government for revisions to the Harmonized Tariff Scheduled of the United States (“HTSUS”) to differentiate between imports of wild-caught versus farm-raised shrimp, with these changes taking effect in July 2021.
As explained in the State Department letter from PAASA and the Southern Shrimp Alliance, official U.S. import data for the HTSUS codes covering wild-caught shrimp indicates that significant quantities are entering the United States from countries without Section 609 certifications. For example, over the last eighteen months, wild-caught shrimp worth over $6.8 million has been imported from Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Venezuela, all countries that lack a certification from the State Department.
At the same time, the trade data also indicates that enforcement actions have been taken to address illegal imports from other countries, particularly China, India, and Vietnam.
