Thank you very much for the opportunity to appear today to talk about the important issue of seafood traceability.
Oceana Canada is part of the largest international advocacy group dedicated solely to ocean conservation in the world. We work with all stakeholders to return Canada’s formerly vibrant oceans to health and abundance.
I would especially like to thank Mrs. Desbiens for proposing this study to examine the implementation of a seafood traceability program. I'm very encouraged to see this committee undertaking this important work on an issue that has implications for the economy, conservation, food security and on fishers and producers.
Seafood fraud or mislabelling includes swapping a cheaper or more readily available one for one that is more expensive, substituting farmed products for wild-caught ones, or passing off illegally caught fish as legitimate. These practices undermine food safety, cheat consumers and the Canadian fishing industry, weaken the sustainability of fish populations, and mask global illegal fishing and human rights abuses.
The solution is full-chain traceability, requiring that key information be paired with products along the entire supply chain with electronic records, from the point of catch to the point of sale. This approach was implemented by the largest importer of seafood in the world, the European Union, 10 years ago, and the rate of mislabelling has since dropped. The United States has also implemented boat-to-border traceability for several species.
The federal government committed to implementing traceability in 2019, but unfortunately little progress has been made since then. To move this file forward in a real way, Oceana Canada recommends committing to an ambitious timeline for developing full-chain traceability. To facilitate this, we recommend that a multi-department task force be convened to allow all relevant departments to work together. We recommend that the traceability framework itself be mandatory, regulation-based, and that it require catch documentation to provide proof of the origin and legality of all species, in line with the EU and the recommendation by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Any new Canadian traceability and catch documentation system must be interoperable with global best practices to avoid a regulatory burden on industry or the creation of loopholes. We further recommend improvements to seafood labelling standards by requiring the scientific species' name and true geographic origin to appear on retail labels, which would also match current EU standards.
As you heard last week, neither of the two lead agencies on this file, CFIA and DFO, feel that they have clear jurisdiction here. That’s understandable. No single agency is wholly in charge of combatting seafood fraud. Fisheries monitoring, food safety, product legality, trade mechanisms, border agencies, labour standards and sustainability requirements are all regulated by different ministries and agencies through a patchwork of legislation and regulatory provisions. This is a complex issue, but that doesn’t mean we cannot or should not address it. If Canada is to keep up with our trading partners, support our fisheries and protect consumers in a modern world, we have to figure this out.
To do so, we do not have to reinvent the wheel. We can and should learn from other jurisdictions, particularly because interoperability will be crucial for the future of global seafood supply chains. When the United States was developing the seafood import monitoring program, more than a dozen federal agencies were convened into a task force to coordinate overlapping jurisdictions, address gaps and build capacity to make traceability possible. I strongly urge this committee to recommend a similar approach here.
We know that seafood fraud is a problem in Canada. Oceana Canada has consistently found widespread mislabelling here at home, but it’s not just us. An analysis of dozens of global studies by The Guardian newspaper last year found that out of the 9,000 samples tested, almost 44% were mislabelled.
Mislabelled and illegally caught seafood products impact our society in numerous ways. Seafood fraud affects public health and food safety. Consumers can unknowingly be exposed to allergens, parasites, toxins and environmental contaminants. Opaque supply chains allow threatened and endangered species into the market. Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing devastates ocean health and fishing communities around the world. In 2019 alone, the United States imported an estimated $2.4 billion worth of illegal seafood. This is troubling for us because almost all—around 80%—of the seafood that we eat in Canada is imported, much of it through the United States. Without robust traceability, we are leaving our supply chains open to seafood products that were caught illegally, that are mislabelled, that were fished through unsustainable means or through forced labour. Canada has the means and the obligation to ensure that all seafood caught and sold here is safe, legally caught, responsibly sourced and honestly labelled.
Thank you very much for your time. I look forward to your questions.