August 21 – The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), a trilateral body that was created under the US-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, has released a report that includes the first-ever official documentation of shrimp laundering in the Mexican Pacific shrimp fishery. The Factual Record published this week by the CEC covers the lack of effective application of Mexican environmental legislation to protect and conserve the Critically Endangered vaquita porpoise. Issues raised include the continued use of illegal gillnets in the shrimp fishery and subsequent transportation of the shrimp to locations outside of the zone currently embargoed by the United States, where new documents are issued to obscure the true origin of the shrimp.
Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) has been aware of these issues since they began in 2018, and has been actively working with industry to address the illegal fishing and reduce risk in their supply chains. We established our Mexican Shrimp Supply Chain Roundtable (SR) – which is currently comprised of four US importers of Mexican Pacific wild shrimp – in response to clear evidence of extensive laundering of illegal gillnet-caught shrimp from the upper Gulf of California.
Mexican Shrimp SR participating companies recognize that the governments of both the United States and Mexico are not properly enforcing existing regulations, and that the supply chains are the last line of defense against illegal fishing in the region. The participants have been commissioning legal verification audits of their supply chains since 2021, using the most rigorous and transparent audit system available.
“Cortez Seafood, Eastern Fish Co., Ocean Garden Products and Pacific Ocean Harvest have dedicated a significant amount of time and money to these complex but important audits, because they want to ensure that their purchasing power is not supporting an illegal fishery. I hope that other importers – and all buyers of Mexican shrimp – choose to join them in closing down access to the lucrative US market for this illegal product, by requiring rigorous legal verification audits,” said Megan Westmeyer, deputy supply chains director at SFP.
The audits are a requirement for membership in the SR, which is open to any US importer that is willing to commit to commissioning legal verification audits and providing full disclosure of the audit results to SFP, to allow for transparency and third-party verification.
To combat non-compliance in the fishery, SFP recommends that all buyers of Mexican shrimp require a rigorous and transparent legal verification system, such as that used by the SR participants. We urge buyers to talk to their suppliers about participating in the Mexican Shrimp SR and to reach out to existing SR members to learn more.