A bipartisan group of eleven powerful U.S. Senators has gone to bat in a big way for the domestic shrimp industry and U.S. shrimp consumers and against illegal shrimp imports by expressing their support for the full implementation of the new U.S. Seafood Import Monitoring Program. Their support was expressed in an April 27, 2017, letter to Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross http://www.shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/04.27.17-Senate-Letter-to-Sec-Ross-FINAL-Signed1.pdf.
The letter, spearheaded by Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy, MD (R-LA), and signed by Senators Cornyn (R-TX), Cochran (R-MS), Shelby (R-AL), Wicker (R-MS), Blumenthal (D-CT), Cruz (R-TX), Markey (D-MA), Tillis (R-NC), Kennedy (R-LA) and Strange (R-AL), cites the litany of illegal and fraudulent activities that plague much of the more than $5 billion of shrimp imported into the U.S. each year. These include evading U.S. antidumping duties recently extended by the International Trade Commission (ITC) on shrimp imports from China, India, Thailand and Vietnam in order to protect the U.S. industry – also with strong Congressional support.
The letter further cites the illegal use of dangerous, FDA-banned antibiotics by foreign shrimp farms and the unconscionable efforts of some shrimp importers to evade FDA’s enforcement of that ban designed to protect the health of U.S. consumers. As the letter notes, if that’s not bad enough, shrimp imports are also sometimes the product of Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fisheries, as well as slave labor.
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