On Monday, the Federal Register will publish notice of the U.S. Department of State’s (State Department) determination to suspend the certification of wild-caught shrimp from Peru. Accordingly, because Section 609 of Public Law 101-162 prohibits the importation of wild-caught shrimp unless a fishery or country has received a certification from the State Department, imports of wild-caught shrimp from Peru may not be entered into the United States effective for all shipments with dates of export of June 1, 2025 or later.
The State Department’s decision follows a joint request made by the Southern Shrimp Alliance and the Port Arthur Area Shrimpers’ Association (PAASA) in August 2024 that the Section 609 certifications awarded to the shrimping industries in Guatemala and Peru be suspended. The joint letter explained that the United States had imported over $31.5 million in wild-caught shrimp from Peru since July 2021 and that the State Department’s finding that the industry does “not pose a threat of incidental taking of sea turtles” was inconsistent with a published study, authored in part by NOAA officials, concluding that small-scale commercial fisheries in Peru were likely capturing “tens of thousands” of sea turtles each year. Nevertheless, despite documented takings of sea turtles, Peru’s annual reports prepared pursuant to the Inter-American Sea Turtle Convention failed to identify any mitigation strategies adopted in the country.
In the Federal Register notice, the State Department states that the agency “suspended the certification of Peru (effective for Peru with Dates of Export June 1st, 2025, and after) because its sea turtle protection program is no longer comparable to that of the United States.”
The Federal Register notice also indicates that the State Department has maintained the Section 609 certification for Guatemala’s shrimp industry. In total, the State Department has certified 42 nations and Hong Kong, authorizing these countries to export wild-caught shrimp to the United States. As the agency also explains in the Federal Register notice, “[t]he importation of wild-caught shrimp or products from that shrimp from any nation or fishery without a certification or determination will not be allowed.”
The August 2024 joint letter from the Southern Shrimp Alliance and PAASA also described how the Section 609 program has directly led to substantial improvements in the commercial shrimp trawling practices in numerous countries around the world and that public reporting indicated that non-certified countries, like India and the Philippines, were actively pursuing mitigation strategies designed to increase the conservation of sea turtle populations in order to gain access to the U.S. market. At the same time, official U.S. import data continued to demonstrate that significant quantities of wild-caught shrimp from non-certified countries has been entering our market, undermining the effectiveness of the Section 609 program.
“We are grateful to the State Department and NOAA Fisheries for carefully considering the domestic shrimp industry’s concerns regarding commercial shrimping practices in Peru and Guatemala,” said John Williams, the Executive Director of the Southern Shrimp Alliance. “The Section 609 program proves that access to the U.S. market can be used to meaningfully improve standards in foreign supply chains and we hope that the State Department’s announcement is a catalyst for change in Peru’s commercial fishing industry.”
Read a pre-publication version of the Federal Register notice of the State Department’s Annual Determination and Certification of Shrimp-Harvesting Nations (scheduled publication date May 12, 2025): https://shrimpalliance.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Annual-Determination-and-Certification-of-Shrimp-Harvesting-Nations-2025-Fed-Reg.pdf
Learn more about the August 22, 2024 joint letter from the Southern Shrimp Alliance and the Port Arthur Area Shrimpers’ Association to the U.S. Department of State here: https://shrimpalliance.com/enforcement-of-section-609-program-improving-foreign-commercial-fishery-practices/