Seafood: Imports

(asked on 25th April 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many (a) documentary checks, (b) physical checks, (c) foreign supplier verification checks and (d) rejections of consignments have been undertaken on seafood consignments imported under the Sea Fishing (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing) Order 2009 in (i) 2019, (ii) 2020, (iii) 2021 and (iv) 2022 to date.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 28th April 2022

Port Health Authorities (PHAs) are the independent competent authority responsible for checking the Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing documentation for containerised imports of fish, working closely with the Marine Management Organisation (MMO). The MMO has provided the following statistics.

Year

Number verification requests under Article 17(6) of the IUU Fishing Regulation (referred to as “foreign supplier verification checks”)

Number of refusals under article 18 of the IUU Fishing Regulation or Section 7 of the Sea Fishing Sea Fishing (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing) Order 2009

2019

28 (1)

5 (0)

2020

129 (0)

0

2021

44 (3)

0

2022 (to date)

32 (1)

0

figures in brackets relate to Chinese IUU fishing document checks

It must be stressed that there are some limitations to this data. Although unlikely, PHAs are able to refuse consignments without involving the MMO. These numbers therefore reflect the data which is held centrally.

Furthermore, PHAs are not required to report their documentary or physical checks to the MMO with the result that not all the relevant data is held centrally. As a result, it is not possible to provide a complete update on the number of specific documentary and physical checks undertaken.

Reticulating Splines