From country-of-origin labelling (COOL) to seafood import monitoring program (SIMP): How far can seafood traceability rules go?

On January 9, 2017, the United States (US) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration enacted the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP) in an effort to close the world's largest seafood market for illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. It also alleges to mitigate the widespread phenomenon of seafood fraud in the US by promoting traceable supply chains involved in its transnational commerce. This novel program shows the potential to complement the decades-long yet patchy seafood country-of-origin labelling in the US, as it mandates more complete and precise chain-of-custody information from harvest to arrival at the US border. In this context, this article further explores the regulatory room and fundamental pitfalls of this program to advance the human vision on sustainable fish and fisheries. It provides a legal and policy insight into the status quo and the reasons accountable for the SIMP to end up serving its narrowly-focused regulatory purposes. Upon that basis the article proposes practical ways for the system to develop and become a viable driver of ecological and social sustainability in the implementation years to come.