Once taken from the water, illegal and unreported fish products enter a highly complex stream of commerce, involving diverse supply chains that may include trans-shipments at sea, landing and transit between countries for various stages of processing, and the division and combination of lots. Official statistics about trade in fish products is often available only at significant levels of data aggregation, so that correlation of trade flows with specific fisheries often requires an intensive primary research.

Moreover, in the seafood industry today, full Alectinib chain traceability is often lacking – or, where it does exist, is often held confidentially within proprietary systems. And information about illegal fishing practices may be concealed even when held by public authorities as it is often considered sensitive or confidential. The nature of the available data and the statistical methods employed for this study support estimates by species and general region at relatively high levels of aggregation. Hence, the results estimate the overall scale of illegal selleck chemical product infection in imports to the USA, not specific illegal fishing hotspots or specific instances of illegal fishing. Moreover, we

report only on import flows to the USA identified by the final country of export. The highly internationalized seafood supply chain feeding imports into the United States and other major markets is one of the most complex and opaque of all natural commodities. It involves many actors between the fisherman and the consumer, including brokers, traders, wholesalers and other middlemen, often distant from the consumer markets they supply. This complicated network is characterized by bulk shipments of seafood of mixed origin that include illegal fish. While some control mechanisms for the assurance

of food safety are DCLK1 in place, there is a lack of monitoring, transparency and accountability as to the sources of the seafood. There are no trace-back procedures to help companies avoid handling the products of poaching and illegal fish products enter the supply chain at multiple points. Once hauled from the water, fish products take a multiplicity of routes to reach the USA: exported directly after harvest; exported after only primary processing; or exported as a store-ready product after both primary and secondary processing (Fig. 2). A significant amount of fish is imported to the USA by first passing through one or more intermediary countries for post-harvest processing and subsequent re-export. These additional steps introduce additional challenges to traceability and allow for the mixing of legally- and illegally-sourced fish, where illegal fish may be essentially ‘laundered’ in the processing countries, and subsequently enter international trade as a ‘legal’ product of the exporting nation.