Evaluating Seafood Policy

Post-implementation evaluation of the United States’  Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) is urgently needed as its future is uncertain, with implications for the SIMP and other potential programs. The SIMP is a traceability program aimed at reducing imports of seafood products that are of illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) origin or associated with seafood fraud. The SIMP has been controversial, and a proposed expansion was tabled in late 2023. Instead, a longer and more public-facing process is underway to consider what expansion could entail and ways to enhance and strengthen the SIMP’s overall impact and effectiveness, with the goal of formulating recommendations on next steps.

ACS and colleagues recently conducted an evaluation of the policy. Published in the journal Ambio, we qualitatively examined the SIMP’s current scope and design by synthesizing publicly available trade data along with measures of IUU fishing and seafood mislabeling. We found prioritized shipments amounted to 33% of 2016 imported tonnage. The SIMP species groups had higher IUU scores and mislabeling rates relative to non-SIMP groups, but the difference was consistent with random prioritization, suggesting potential benefits from program expansion. Furthermore, two-thirds of imported volume lacked a mislabeling rate and 5% lacked species information, underlining the urgent need for improved open-access data on globalized seafood supply chains.

The figure above shows the aggregate estimated tonnage and proportion of exports to the U.S. covered by SIMP by country. The proportion of a country’s exports to the U.S. covered by SIMP is shown at left. Export tonnages and proportions of export tonnage of SIMP products to the U.S. are shown by country at right. Only exporters of more than 10 000 metric tons of SIMP products are shown, which together accounted for 94% by tonnage of imports of SIMP products