Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers wholeheartedly endorse call for ban on Russian seafood imports
SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton - August 22, 2014
The Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers (ABSC) have called on President Obama to immediately initiate an import ban on Russian seafood products to the United States. This ban is in retaliation for the recently announced ban on seafood imports into Russia from the US and the EU.
"Mr. Putin has demonstrated that he is more than willing to flex Russian economic muscle to achieve its foreign policy objectives. It’s time for the US to follow suit and flex some muscles of its own," said the group.
The Bering Sea Crabbers have long sought to call attention to the impact of Russian imports, particularly illegal imports, on the crab market in the U.S.
In testimony in prior years from the WWF on IUU fishing, they said “since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 there has been an explosion of IUU crab fishing within Russia’s exclusive economic zone. At some point along the trade route, IUU crab is laundered to appear as if it is of legal origin. Misdeclaring quantities, mislabeling products, creating false documentation, and bribing individuals are known techniques for laundering illegal crab.”
Although some of this illegal crab activity has been reduced, no one on either side of the Pacific claims it is eliminated
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