First of all, thank you for the invitation to appear before you. I thought I'd start by giving you a short description of the Fisheries Council of Canada and then of our industry.
The Fisheries Council of Canada, FCC, is a national association right from British Columbia to Nunavut. It is basically a $6-billion industry. We employ about 83,000 people. The FCC members produce most of that production. We also are significant harvesters in British Columbia through the BC Seafood Alliance, which represents about 90% of the value of the fish and seafood landed in British Columbia. In Atlantic Canada, we're predominantly harvesters of shrimp, groundfish, scallops, and herring.
Our members, the people who pay my salary, are primarily what we would call integrated companies, in the sense that they own and control their own harvesting vessels and the processing plants, and are involved in the marketing and exporting of the products. In the FCC, we're also very proud of the main fishermen’s cooperatives in New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador. I should say P.E.I., but at this time in P.E.I., the processors association is floundering and hasn't been able to pay its bills. We hope to have them back in shortly. Fishermen's cooperatives are basically fishermen's associations that have forward integrated into the market, in the sense that they not only harvest but also own and operate a processing facility.
Our industry is an export industry. We export about 66% of what we produce. Sixty per cent of those exports go to the U.S.A. One could say that we are very much dependent, if you will, upon the United States, but if you look across the industrial sector of Canada in terms of exporting, you will find that for most of our sectors, whether it's meat or whatever, they're into the 70% or 75% dependency on the U.S. market. We've been somewhat involved in a strategy, if you will, of market diversification. Our dependency on the United States on exports is 60%. That's progress, but it is still high.
In the last number of years in terms of the strategy, we've been very much focusing on Asia Pacific. At the time, the EU was not particularly attractive. What we were facing there was that our main competitors, the Scandinavians, had duty-free access to the European Union, and for developing countries, most of them had duty-free access to the EU. Fish and seafood is the largest traded food commodity in the world. Right now, developing countries in terms of volume supply about 40% of what's being traded around the world.
In terms of our strategy, we feel that we have been successful. If we look at our top five markets, we find that three of them are in Asia Pacific. Our number one market is the United States. Our number two market is Canada itself. Our number three market is China, at $440 million. Our number four market is Japan, at $260 million. Our number five market is Hong Kong, at $130 million.
In that scenario, what's missing? What's missing is a European country, despite the fact that the EU is the largest seafood market in the world. The first significant market for us in terms of an EU country is the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom is now seventh, with about $90 million of our exports. It comes behind Russia, which is sixth, at $104 million.
What we see with respect to CETA is it will be changing this picture that I've just presented to you. It's a game changer. It's a game changer for a number of Atlantic fisheries: for shrimp, particularly cooked and peeled; lobster processing, which will also then have spillover benefits to the live lobster sector; herring; and mackerel. There's no question that CETA also has positive things with respect to British Columbia groundfish and salmon fisheries, and also in terms of Yukon and the Northwest Territories, with respect to the freshwater fisheries of walleye and pickerel.
In summary, reducing the tariffs of 15% and 20% to zero in the world's largest market is really going to help us put our diversification strategy into high gear.
What we've noticed over a number of years is that the EU has expanded from about 13 or 14 countries to 28. In doing that it has become the world's largest seafood market, but if you look at Canadian exports into the EU, we haven't participated in that growth. Between 2006 and 2012, the value of exports to the EU dropped 38%. Meanwhile, our exports to the United States remained stable, and obviously, we've had significant increases in China, Russia, and the Asia-Pacific in general.
Basically, the EU high tariffs have been forcing us to really focus on emerging markets, particularly emerging markets that are growing with middle-class populations. These markets, China and Russia, are lucrative markets, but they are risky markets. What we find in many of these markets is that the WTO trade rules, the Codex standards, are having a hard time getting traction. There are really some significant problems in terms of dealing with that.
With respect to CETA, I'll give you two examples where we think it's a game changer. Cooked and peeled shrimp, which is basically in Newfoundland, New Brunswick, and Quebec, the market for that product is the U.K., Denmark, and Sweden. The tariff rate in the EU right now is 20%. Our access to that market is totally dependent upon the EU unilaterally establishing what we call autonomous tariff reductions that allow our products to go in at a reduced rate or zero provided there's further processing of those products in the EU.
We've been in this game for at least 10 years, particularly as the shrimp industry expanded in Newfoundland and Labrador. We started off with maybe a 5,000 tonne quota at 7%, and the last quota that was negotiated for the period 2013-15 is 30,000 tonnes at 0%.
What's happened in those years and more recent years, is that trying to get some form of agreement with the Europeans has been much easier than in the beginning. That's primarily because the last industrialized shrimp peeling plant in the EU closed a number of years ago. However, we see that changing.
What we're seeing now is hand peeling developing in Poland, Bulgaria, and Estonia. Our concern in terms of the cooked and peeled shrimp industry, which is vital to Newfoundland and Labrador and very important to New Brunswick and Quebec, is that when the 2013-15 arrangement expires and you have to have one for 2016, there will be voices in the EU in terms of either eliminating the type of access or reducing it. Really, the CETA is coming just in time in terms of this oncoming significant challenge.
What CETA does, is it gets that industry out of that dysfunctional mess of what we call ATRQs. It was particularly difficult for the east coast of Newfoundland, where they would start their shrimp fishery in late June, July, and then, say for example, by September the duty-free quota into the EU would be fully exhausted by supplies from other provinces, and also from the west coast of Newfoundland and Labrador, and then the quota would jump up to 20%.
What the industry would do is we'd continue to fish, harvest, produce, put it in cold storage, either in Canada or in the EU, pay for that, and then on January 1 of the next year just dump it on the market. As I said, that's totally dysfunctional, but people were living and making a few dollars. CETA will get us out of that.
Lobster processing is very important to P.E.I. and New Brunswick. Eighty-five per cent of the processed products that we produce in Canada goes to the United States. What's been happening in recent years is a growing worldwide market for lobster tails and claws. With that type of product, because it is an excellent product for restaurants and high-end restaurants, we've actually had good inroads to the EU despite the 16% tariff.
The tariff is 16% for that particular product, and for the processed lobster meat it's 20%. What we see there is that the elimination of that tariff will open up a market for those products in the EU leading to what we feel will be expansion in the lobster processing sector. That will also be very positive for the live lobster sector because what we have right now is an oversupply of live lobster markets from Canada and from Maine hitting the marketplace and causing a significant reduction in prices.
Those are just two examples that we think are game changers.
I could mention, for example, herring and mackerel. It's certainly positive there in the sense that we used to have very good exports of those products into what is called eastern Europe in terms of countries such as Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, because they are basically a low-cost food item. We were doing well in there. They joined the European Union. No question it was economically beneficial for those countries, but at the same time, in joining the EU, they have to also adopt the EU tariff structure.
Previously, we could get into those markets at 0%. They joined the EU, and the tariff is now up to 15% on those products. Now in that market we only become a residual supplier, residual in the sense that if the European and Scandinavian stocks are down, then we have opportunities. Now with CETA we have to go back. Hopefully we'll be able to get back into the herring and mackerel food markets of eastern Europe and also expand throughout.
The Fisheries Council of Canada fully supports CETA. We see it as further ammunition in terms of our market diversification strategy. It will enhance prosperity, and we will also see some increased processing, particularly on the cooked and peeled shrimp side and also in lobster processing.
I'd like to end by thanking the trade officials at international trade Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans who kept us informed of issues and who listened to our comments. We felt that our comments and suggestions were considered. We had very positive relationships, and we're very thankful for that type of opportunity.
That's my presentation. I hope I haven't taken too long.