(Washington D.C., November 26, 2024) On Thursday, November 14, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced an Action Plan for enhancing the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP). SIMP is a risk-based traceability program that creates record-keeping and reporting requirements for imports of 13 seafood species groups to help prevent seafood caught using illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing from entering U.S. markets.

The Action Plan provides a comprehensive set of goals and actions, including actions that would incorporate labor rights considerations into SIMP. In the Action Plan, NOAA aims to take the following actions with implications for forced labor enforcement:

• Add Labor KDEs: SIMP requires importers of covered seafood species to report on specific key data elements (KDEs) that can serve as indicators of illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing. In this Action Plan, NOAA plans to incorporate KDEs that would serve as indicators of forced labor and other labor abuses in covered seafood supply chains.
• Strengthen Partnerships: NOAA commits to strength partnerships with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Labor to share data, collaborate, and investigate instances of forced labor in covered seafood supply chains.
• Expand SIMP: NOAA commits to expanding SIMP traceability requirements to cover all seafood species under a two-tiered risk-based system, whereby lower risk species would be subject to fewer KDE reporting requirements.

Forced labor and IUU fishing are closely tied and often go hand in hand. Factors such as increasing demand for seafood and artificially low prices have resulted in many fishing vessels relying on forced labor and labor abuses to make a profit. CBP is currently able to access SIMP data to support enforcement actions against seafood imports found to have been caught or processed using forced labor. Including labor KDEs in the SIMP traceability requirements will provide CBP with more insight into seafood supply chains and support enforcement of the forced labor import ban under Section 307 of the Tariff Act.

“We welcome NOAA’s commitment to working more closely and collaboratively with the Department of Labor and CBP. Our hope is that SIMP can be a model for supply chain transparency mechanisms to share information to forced labor enforcement mechanisms,” said David McKean, Executive Director of the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR). “Information sharing between programs like SIMP and U.S. government forced labor enforcement mechanisms will be essential to ensuring the rights of workers in U.S. supply chains are protected.”

This Action Plan comes a year after NOAA announced a comprehensive review of the SIMP program. In November 2023, NOAA withdrew a proposed rule that would have expanded SIMP to cover an additional five seafood species groups and announced the SIMP review following significant and extensive feedback from several stakeholders. The Action Plan is expected to be implemented through NOAA rulemaking in 2025.

“While we are glad to see NOAA’s plans to incorporate labor rights into SIMP, we are waiting to see how NOAA implements these actions in their proposed rule next year,” said David McKean. “We look forward to providing input on the rulemaking process wherever we can.”