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📅 Prepared October 12, 2026

✍️ Dirk Adams with the assistance of AI

⌛ 15 min read

FAT RESEARCH SERIES — SEAFOOD

SEAFOOD RESEARCH SERIES | PAPER NO. 7

What the FDA Cannot See

Bycatch, Seafood Imports, and the Gap Between Food-Safety Enforcement and Fishing Rules

No FDA rule governs bycatch. A crosswalk of 3,214 FDA seafood import refusals against NOAA’s marine-mammal import bans shows where the two records point to the same countries and species — and where the bycatch problem is invisible to the agency that inspects seafood at the border.^1,2,3

Prepared for publication by Farm Animal Transparency with the assistance of AI | October 12, 2026

“The FDA can refuse a shrimp for what is in it, or for what its label says. It cannot refuse a shrimp for what was killed to catch it.”

At a glance

• No FDA regulation addresses bycatch. FDA refuses imported seafood for adulteration and misbranding under the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act; how a fish was caught is outside its authority. Bycatch is regulated by NOAA Fisheries and, for shrimp and sea turtles, the State Department.^4,5,6
• Two-thirds of FDA’s seafood import refusals since January 2024 — 2,170 of 3,214 refused entry lines — came from 28 countries that also have at least one fishery under an active U.S. import ban for marine-mammal bycatch.^1,2
• The records rarely meet at the species level. NOAA’s bans fall hardest on gillnet fisheries for sharks, mackerels, croakers, and small pelagics; FDA refused one shark line in nearly three years. Fourteen of the 42 banned nations had no FDA seafood refusals at all.^1,2
• The data that could connect the two systems — SIMP harvest records, which include fishing gear — are confidential, cover about 30% of import value, and were audited at a 0.25% rate in FY2023. NOAA has signaled it may cut SIMP data fields in 2026.^7,8,9

Executive Summary

Bycatch — fish, marine mammals, sea turtles, seabirds, and sharks caught unintentionally alongside the target species — is one of the largest environmental costs of wild seafood. Bottom trawls and gillnets, the gear types featured in recent coverage of seafloor damage, are also the gear types that most often entangle protected species. Consumers who see that coverage reasonably ask whether the FDA, the agency that inspects most seafood sold in the United States, screens for it.

It does not. FDA’s seafood authority runs through adulteration and misbranding: pathogens, filth and decomposition, histamine, drug residues, Seafood HACCP compliance, and false or misleading labels, including species substitution.^4,10 A shipment caught in a gillnet that drowns dolphins is, under the FD&C Act, indistinguishable from one caught on a pole and line. The bycatch rules that do apply to imports belong to NOAA Fisheries under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA), the Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), and the Moratorium Protection Act, and to the State Department under Section 609 for shrimp and sea turtles.^5,6,7,11

Because the two systems share no common record — FDA does not record fishery or gear, and NOAA does not publish shipment-level data — Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) built a crosswalk that matches them on what they do share: country of origin and species group. FAT pulled every FDA import refusal for industry code 16 (fishery and seafood products) from January 2, 2024 through October 7, 2026, and matched it against NOAA’s list of 259 foreign fisheries under an active MMPA import prohibition as of October 2026.^1,2,3

The result is a map of overlap and blind spots. FDA enforcement concentrates in the same countries NOAA has flagged for marine-mammal bycatch, especially Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Ecuador, where FDA-refused product groups — tuna, mahi mahi, grouper, snapper, shrimp — are also the targets of banned gillnet and trammel-net fisheries. But FDA’s record is nearly silent on the species and nations where bycatch bans are most concentrated. The companion workbook publishes every count as a live formula so that readers can test the findings.

Who regulates bycatch

Five federal tools touch seafood imports. Only one belongs to FDA, and it is the only one with no bycatch role.

Tool	Agency	What it screens for	Bycatch role
Import refusals, import alerts, Seafood HACCP	FDA	Adulteration and misbranding, including species substitution	None
MMPA import provisions	NOAA Fisheries; CBP at entry	Whether a foreign fishery’s marine-mammal bycatch protections are comparable to U.S. standards	Direct — the only U.S. import ban keyed to marine-mammal bycatch
Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP)	NOAA Fisheries	Harvest and chain-of-custody records for 13 species groups, aimed at illegal fishing and fraud	Indirect — gear type is a required data element
Section 609 shrimp certification	State Department	Sea turtle protection (turtle excluder devices) in wild shrimp trawling	Direct, for sea turtles in shrimp
Moratorium Protection Act identifications	NOAA Fisheries	Illegal fishing, protected-species bycatch, shark catch, forced labor	Direct for identified nations; trade measures rare

Sources: 21 CFR Part 123; 16 U.S.C. 1371(a)(2); 50 CFR 216.24(h); 50 CFR 300.324; Pub. L. 101-162 §609; NOAA 2026 Report to Congress.^4,5,6,7,11

The MMPA import provisions are the main bycatch tool

Under a rule issued in 2016, every foreign fishery exporting to the United States had to show that its marine-mammal protections are comparable in effectiveness to U.S. standards.⁵ After four extensions and a court settlement, NOAA issued final findings on September 2, 2025, covering about 2,500 fisheries in 135 nations. NOAA reports that 240 fisheries from 46 nations were denied, and imports from them have been prohibited since January 1, 2026.^2,12 Findings run through 2029.

The list has moved since. In 2026 NOAA granted findings on reapplication to fisheries in New Caledonia, Grenada, Ireland, and Suriname; reversed denials for swimming crab from Vietnam, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka after an industry lawsuit; and reaffirmed denials for two Philippine swimming crab fisheries, banned from June 11, 2026.^2,13,14 On July 29, 2026, NOAA opened an advance notice of proposed rulemaking asking how the whole program should be revised; comments closed September 28.¹⁵

Section 609 and the Moratorium Protection Act

The State Department’s April 2026 certification lists 36 nations plus Hong Kong as eligible to export wild-caught shrimp because they protect sea turtles comparably or fish where turtles are not at risk; Peru was suspended in 2025.⁶ Farmed shrimp, which make up much of what the United States imports from Asia, are not subject to the certification. Separately, NOAA’s June 2026 report to Congress identified Indonesia and Papua New Guinea for sea turtle bycatch in their Pacific longline fisheries.¹¹

What FDA’s record shows — and does not

FDA’s seafood import refusals are public at the level of the individual entry line: firm, country, product code, and the statutory charges that justified the refusal.^1,16 They show an agency enforcing food safety. Across the 3,214 refused lines in the study period, the most common charges were filth or decomposition (827 lines), insanitary manufacturing (766), and pathogens such as Salmonella and Listeria (740), followed by veterinary drug residues (358) and HACCP or process-control failures (340).¹

Labeling enforcement is a much smaller share. 353 lines carried any misbranding charge, and only 7 carried the charges that describe species substitution directly — WRONG IDEN (“offered for sale under the name of another food”) or FALSECAT. Five of those were from a single Tanzanian exporter; the others were snapper from Suriname and mackerel from Japan.^1,16 FDA’s species-misbranding import alert, 16-04, lists about 52 firms in 23 countries.¹⁷

Nothing in the record identifies the fishery, gear type, or vessel. FDA’s product codes do distinguish aquaculture from other product, but ‘not aquaculture’ is not the same as wild-caught, and wild-caught does not reveal how. That is the gap the crosswalk tries to bridge.

The crosswalk

FAT matched the two datasets on country of origin and on 20 species groups, including all 13 SIMP groups. FDA product descriptions and NOAA target-species lists were each classified by keyword; one NOAA fishery often targets several groups and is counted in each. Aquaculture refusal lines were kept separate, because a farmed product cannot have come from a banned capture fishery. Every count in this paper is a formula in the companion workbook.³

Measure	Result
FDA seafood import refusal lines, Jan 2, 2024 – Oct 7, 2026	3,214 (1,791 entries)
…coded as aquaculture product	759
Foreign fisheries under an active MMPA import ban (Oct 2026)	259 in 42 nations
…using gillnets	111
Countries with both FDA refusals and an active MMPA ban	28
FDA refusal lines from those 28 countries	2,170 (67.5%)
Banned nations with no FDA seafood refusals	14
Country–species pairs where both records overlap	41
…rated strong leads	10

Source: FAT analysis of FDA Data Dashboard import refusals and NOAA’s MMPA denial list; see companion workbook.^1,2,3 NOAA’s count of 240 denied fisheries reflects its September 2025 notice; FAT’s 259 transcribes NOAA’s May 2026 denial list, which itemizes fisheries differently, net of 2026 reversals.

Findings

1. FDA enforcement and bycatch bans fall on the same countries

Two-thirds of FDA’s refused seafood lines came from countries that also have a fishery under an MMPA import ban. The overlap is driven by the largest Asian suppliers.

Country	U.S. imports 2025	FDA refusal lines	Active MMPA bans	Other bycatch flags
Indonesia	$1.85B	750	4	MPA: sea turtle bycatch (2026); not 609-certified
Vietnam	$1.82B	340	11 (all gillnet)	Not 609-certified
China	$1.28B	230	4	MPA: illegal fishing, shark catch
Senegal	—	146	6	—
Philippines	—	97	4	Swimming crab ban from June 2026
Ecuador	$1.97B	85	1	609-certified
South Korea	—	68	14	—
Mexico	$0.63B	35	21	MPA: illegal fishing; Gulf of Ulloa turtle bycatch

Sources: FAT crosswalk; import values from Posadas (2026) using NOAA trade data; Section 609 (91 FR 21364); NOAA 2026 Report to Congress.^1,2,6,11,18

Indonesia is the only country flagged by all three systems: the most FDA refusals of any nation, four fisheries under MMPA bans (a trammel-net shrimp fishery and three gillnet fisheries for grouper and snapper, tuna and mahi mahi, and cobia), and a 2026 Moratorium Protection Act identification for sea turtle bycatch. Its FDA count is inflated by one firm: 369 of its 750 lines are shrimp from PT. Bahari Makmur Sejati, refused after FDA linked Indonesian shrimp to cesium-137 contamination.^1,17 Even without that firm, Indonesia ranks first.

2. Ten strong leads where the records point the same way

At the species level, FAT rated a country–species pair a strong lead when FDA refused at least 10 non-aquaculture lines in a SIMP-covered group that a banned fishery in the same country also targets. SIMP coverage matters because NOAA already holds harvest and gear records for those entries.

Country	Species group	FDA lines (non-aquaculture)	Banned fishery gear
Indonesia	Tunas	107	Gillnets
Indonesia	Shrimp	83	Trammel nets
Indonesia	Grouper	68	Gillnets
Indonesia	Snapper	36	Gillnets
Indonesia	Mahi mahi	18	Gillnets
Vietnam	Mahi mahi	37	Gillnets, longlines
Vietnam	Tunas	31	Gillnets, purse seines
Vietnam	Grouper	27	Gillnets, longlines, trawls
Philippines	Tunas	27	Drift gillnets
Ecuador	Mahi mahi	23	Gillnets

Source: FAT crosswalk, Overlap_Pairs sheet.³

A lead is not a finding. Neither agency’s public record shows whether any refused lot came from the banned fishery rather than from a permitted one in the same country; Indonesian tuna, for example, is also caught by longline, purse seine, and pole-and-line fisheries that NOAA did not ban. But these are the pairs where a records request, a SIMP audit, or a review of Certifications of Admissibility filed with Customs could answer the question.

3. Where bycatch bans are concentrated, FDA’s record is nearly blank

The species most exposed to bycatch bans are not the species FDA refuses. Sharks are targeted by 21 banned fisheries in 10 nations; FDA refused one shark line in the study period. Mackerels are targeted by 49 banned fisheries in 26 nations, croakers by 28, and small pelagics such as sardines and anchovies by 39; FDA refused 33, 36, and 127 lines respectively, almost all for sanitation, process-control, or decomposition problems rather than anything tied to how the fish were caught.^1,2

Fourteen of the 42 banned nations had no FDA seafood refusals at all: Benin, Cameroon, El Salvador, The Gambia, Iran, Liberia, Madagascar, Mauritania, Namibia, Russia, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Somalia, and Togo. Russia has more denied fisheries than any other nation (64), but Russian-origin seafood has been barred from the United States under separate sanctions since 2022, so the bycatch ban adds little at the border.^2,19

The reverse also holds. India and Thailand together account for 334 FDA refusal lines and have no fisheries under an MMPA ban. Both send the United States mostly farmed shrimp, which falls outside both the MMPA provisions and Section 609. Their enforcement record is about drugs, filth, and pathogens, not about catch method.

4. Species substitution is the narrow bridge between the two systems

The one place FDA authority touches bycatch is labeling. Low-value fish caught as bycatch can be sold under the name of a higher-value species, and FDA treats that as misbranding. FDA’s own DNA survey of wholesale seafood found 85% of lots correctly labeled, but only 63% of snapper; a 2019 Oceana survey of 449 retail and restaurant samples found 21% mislabeled.^20,21 In April 2026, FDA warned that rockfish labeled as snapper is misbranded.²²

Snapper and grouper — the most-substituted species in FDA’s own testing — are SIMP-covered groups, and both are targets of banned gillnet fisheries in Indonesia and Vietnam. Yet FDA refused only 7 lines in nearly three years on species-identity charges. At that volume, DNA-based labeling enforcement is not a meaningful check on bycatch entering the supply chain under another name.

Why the gap matters now

SIMP was designed to carry the information FDA lacks. Importers of the 13 covered species groups must report vessel, catch area, landing, and the ‘type(s) of fishing gear used to harvest the fish.’⁷ In principle, NOAA can tell which refused tuna or grouper came from a gillnet. In practice, three limits apply:

• Coverage. SIMP covered about 30% of U.S. seafood imports by value in FY2023. A May 2026 report by a coalition of conservation groups estimated that about 60% of 2024 import value entered without SIMP reporting.^8,23
• Audit rate. NOAA audited 329 entries in FY2023, about 0.25% of SIMP entries, and found roughly 56% of audited filings noncompliant. Seven shipments were refused.⁸
• Confidentiality. SIMP data are confidential under the Magnuson-Stevens Act and Customs law. Only annual aggregates are published, and no SIMP report to Congress after FY2023 has been located.^7,9

Policy is moving away from more data. Executive Order 14276 (April 2025) directed Commerce to consider revising or rescinding SIMP expansions, and a September 2026 NOAA leadership message proposed eliminating ‘any mandated Seafood Import Monitoring Program data fields that lack active operational use cases.’^24,25 Gear type is the field that links SIMP to bycatch. Meanwhile, the MMPA program itself is under review, and NOAA has not published counts of shipments stopped under the bans that took effect in January.¹⁵

What would close the gap

FDA cannot regulate bycatch without new legislation, and this paper does not argue that it should. The gap can be narrowed with the authorities agencies already have:

• Share refusal and ban data across agencies. FDA refusals of SIMP-covered species from nations with MMPA-banned fisheries for the same species should be referred to NOAA for audit. The 2009 FDA–NOAA memorandum of understanding covers inspection cooperation but does not mention bycatch.²⁶
• Publish enforcement counts for the MMPA bans. NOAA and CBP should report, by nation and tariff code, the number of shipments filed with Certifications of Admissibility and the number refused.
• Keep gear type in SIMP. Any streamlining of SIMP data fields should retain gear type, the only federal import data element that can connect a shipment to a bycatch-prone fishery.
• Target DNA testing to ban-exposed species. FDA species sampling could prioritize snapper, grouper, mahi mahi, and tuna from nations with banned fisheries for those species.
• Give consumers the method, not just the origin. Retail country-of-origin labeling for fish requires only country and ‘wild’ or ‘farm-raised.’²⁷ Gear type is the information shoppers would need to act on bycatch concerns, and it is not on any required label.

Limitations

FDA refusal lines are not shipments or volumes; one entry can generate several lines, and a few firms drive large counts. FDA’s dashboard data can differ from its Import Refusal Report. NOAA’s denial list was transcribed from a PDF dated May 11, 2026 and adjusted for later Federal Register notices; tariff codes for denied fisheries were not available to FAT. Species-group matching is by keyword and is necessarily approximate. Catfish and other Siluriformes are inspected by USDA and do not appear in FDA’s data. Most important, matching by country and species shows where to look, not what happened.

About this series

The Seafood Research Series examines how U.S. agencies police the seafood Americans buy. Paper No. 6, How the FDA Enforces Seafood Law, described FDA’s seafood enforcement tools; this paper tests what those tools cannot reach. Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) publishes enforcement-data research and label-transparency tools at farmanimaltransparency.com. The companion workbook, Seafood_Research_Series_Paper_07_FDA_NOAA_Bycatch_Crosswalk.xlsx, contains the data and formulas behind every figure.

1. FDA Data Dashboard, Import Refusals, industry code 16 (fishery/seafood products), refusal dates Jan. 2, 2024–Oct. 7, 2026, retrieved Oct. 12, 2026, https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/cd/imprefusals.htm.
2. NOAA Fisheries, “2025 Marine Mammal Protection Act Comparability Finding Determinations,” and denial list dated May 11, 2026 (comp-finding-denials-fisheries_05-11-2026.pdf), https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/international-affairs/2025-marine-mammal-protection-act-comparability-finding-determinations.
3. Farm Animal Transparency, Seafood_Research_Series_Paper_07_FDA_NOAA_Bycatch_Crosswalk.xlsx (Oct. 12, 2026).
4. Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act §§402, 403, 801(a), 21 U.S.C. 342, 343, 381(a); 21 CFR Part 123 (Fish and Fishery Products).
5. 16 U.S.C. 1371(a)(2); 50 CFR 216.24(h); NOAA Fisheries, “Fish and Fish Product Import Provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” 81 Fed. Reg. 54390 (Aug. 15, 2016).
6. Department of State, “Annual Certification of Shrimp-Harvesting Nations,” 91 Fed. Reg. 21364 (Apr. 21, 2026); 90 Fed. Reg. 20201 (May 12, 2025) (Peru).
7. 50 CFR 300.324; NOAA Fisheries, “Seafood Import Monitoring Program”; NOAA, SIMP Compliance Guide (Jan. 2024).
8. NOAA Fisheries, Seafood Import Monitoring Program Report to Congress, FY2023 (May 2024), https://fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2024-05/SIMP-Report-to-Congress-FY2023.pdf.
9. Congressional Research Service, The Seafood Import Monitoring Program (SIMP), R48469 (updated Apr. 21, 2026).
10. FDA, Food Compliance Program 7303.842, Domestic and Imported Fish and Fishery Products; see also Seafood Research Series Paper No. 6, How the FDA Enforces Seafood Law.
11. NOAA Fisheries, Improving International Fisheries Management: 2026 Report to Congress (June 2026), https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/s3/2026-07/report-to-congress-intl-fish-mgmt-june2026-508.pdf.
12. NOAA Fisheries, “Implementation of Fish and Fish Product Import Provisions of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,” 90 Fed. Reg. 42395 (Sept. 2, 2025).
13. 91 Fed. Reg. 12510 (Mar. 16, 2026) (New Caledonia, Grenada, Ireland); 91 Fed. Reg. 37086 (June 22, 2026) (Suriname); 91 Fed. Reg. 11962 (Mar. 11, 2026) (New Zealand).
14. 91 Fed. Reg. 25867 (May 12, 2026) (swimming crab); National Fisheries Institute v. United States, No. 25-00223 (Ct. Int’l Trade, filed Oct. 9, 2025).
15. NOAA Fisheries, Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, MMPA import provisions, 91 Fed. Reg. 47798 (July 29, 2026), Docket NOAA-NMFS-2026-0826.
16. FDA Data Dashboard, charge-code definitions (ACT_SECTION_CHARGES.CSV), https://datadashboard.fda.gov/oii/download/ACT_SECTION_CHARGES.CSV.
17. FDA, Import Alert 16-04, “Detention Without Physical Examination of Seafood Products That Appear To Be Misbranded” (updated Sept. 15, 2026); Import Alert 99-52 (Indonesian shrimp, cesium-137).
18. B. Posadas, “U.S. Seafood Imports and Major Countries of Origin,” Mississippi State University Extension, MASGP-26-059-3 (Mar. 20, 2026), compiled from NOAA trade data.
19. Executive Order 14068 (Mar. 11, 2022) and Executive Order 14114 (Dec. 22, 2023) (prohibiting imports of Russian-origin seafood, including when processed in third countries).
20. FDA, “DNA Testing at the Wholesale Level to Evaluate Proper Labeling of Seafood Species” (FY2012–2013 results).
21. Oceana, “Oceana Finds Seafood Fraud Persists” (Mar. 7, 2019).
22. FDA, Notice on use of the term “snapper” for rockfish, 91 Fed. Reg. 16200 (Apr. 1, 2026), Docket FDA-2026-N-2741.
23. U.S. IUU Fishing & Labor Rights Coalition, SIMP policy brief (May 2026), as reported by SeafoodSource (May 21, 2026).
24. Executive Order 14276, “Restoring American Seafood Competitiveness,” §4(g), 90 Fed. Reg. 16993 (Apr. 22, 2025).
25. NOAA Fisheries, leadership message, “Advancing Agency-Level Reforms to Restore American Seafood Competitiveness” (Sept. 2, 2026).
26. FDA–NOAA Memorandum of Understanding 225-09-0008 (2009), https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/domestic-mous/mou-225-09-0008.
27. 7 CFR Part 60 (country-of-origin labeling for fish and shellfish), USDA Agricultural Marketing Service.

Farm Animal Transparency (FAT) · farmanimaltransparency.com · Seafood Research Series, Paper No. 7. Data: companion workbook Seafood_Research_Series_Paper_07_FDA_NOAA_Bycatch_Crosswalk.xlsx.