Alaska Democratic House Rep. Mary Peltola praised the Biden administration's recent closing of a loophole allowing Russia-origin seafood reprocessed in China to enter the US market, calling it "the most pro-fish" executive order in the nation's history in her annual address to the Alaska Legislature Monday.
"After catching untold, unreported amounts of fish, Russian fleets use Uyghur slave labor in China to process their catch, avoiding Western sanctions and bottoming out the price of seafood for every Alaskan vessel," Peltola, who sponsored legislation to close the loophole, said.
The executive order was designed to close a loophole that has allowed Russian-origin salmon, pollock, cod and crab processed in China and other countries to enter the US market, circumventing a ban on Russian seafood imports first introduced in 2022 in response to the country’s invasion of Ukraine.
In calling out Uyghur slave labor in China, Peltola and a growing number of US lawmakers are asking for even more sanctions on seafood imports from China, pointing to labor and human rights violations as well as illegal fishing connected to products that are being sold in the United States.
"This is a system that has been perfected over the last decade by Russians to make more and more of a shared resource, funding a two-year bloody war in Ukraine while pushing ever-closer to our waters," she said.
Peltola, who is up for re-election this year, pointed to her own efforts to unite the US domestic seafood industry through the creation of the "American Seafood Caucus."
