US lifts ban on fish and fish products from Grenada

The Grena­da gov­ern­ment Wednes­day con­firmed that a fish­eries ban im­posed by the Unit­ed States has been lift­ed even as St. George’s ac­knowl­edged that there is still more work to be done.

The US Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA) im­posed the ban on fish and fish prod­ucts be­cause Grena­da failed to pro­vide a “com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty find­ing” un­der the Ma­rine Mam­mal Pro­tec­tion Act (MM­PA), which re­quires that for­eign fish­ing op­er­a­tions do not kill or se­ri­ous­ly in­jure ma­rine mam­mals more of­ten than US ves­sels.

Grena­di­an au­thor­i­ties said the ban was a se­vere blow, im­pact­ing over EC$50 mil­lion (One EC dol­lar=US$0.37 cents) in an­nu­al ex­ports, pri­mar­i­ly yel­lowfin tu­na, which rep­re­sents a key sec­tor for Grena­da’s econ­o­my and sup­ports thou­sands of jobs.

In re­sponse to the ban, the Grena­da gov­ern­ment passed the Fish­eries (Amend­ment) Bill 2025, which in­tro­duced stricter con­ser­va­tion mea­sures, in­clud­ing a fish­eries ob­serv­er pro­gram, en­hanced mon­i­tor­ing for long­line ves­sels, and penal­ties up to EC$100,000 for vi­o­la­tions.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence on Wednes­day, the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment, Plan­ning, Agri­cul­ture and Lands, Forestry, Blue Econ­o­my, Ma­rine Re­sources and Co­op­er­a­tives Min­is­ter, Lennox An­drews, said the gov­ern­ment had de­layed an­nounc­ing con­fir­ma­tion of the lift­ing of the ban be­cause it had to make sure the of­fi­cial no­tice had been pub­lished in the US Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter.

In ad­di­tion, he said Grena­da al­so had to re­ceive the of­fi­cial ad­vice from NOAA and that of­fi­cial ad­vice was dat­ed March 13, 2026.

An­drews said that the let­ter states that the com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty find­ing de­ter­mi­na­tions for Grena­da are valid through De­cem­ber 31, 2029.

“Dur­ing this pe­ri­od, NOAA Fish­eries may re­con­sid­er and may ter­mi­nate a com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty find­ing if it is de­ter­mined based on any progress re­port or oth­er avail­able in­for­ma­tion that Grena­da’s reg­u­la­to­ry pro­gramme no longer meets the ap­plic­a­ble con­di­tions for a com­pa­ra­bil­i­ty find­ing.

“There­fore, NOAA Fish­eries strong­ly en­cour­ages Grena­da to main­tain and where pos­si­ble its ef­forts to min­imise the in­ci­den­tal mor­tal­i­ty and se­ri­ous in­jury of ma­rine mam­mals as­so­ci­at­ed with your na­tion’s com­mer­cial fish­eries,” An­drews quot­ed from the let­ter.

“So es­sen­tial­ly there are re­al­ly and tru­ly two main is­sues com­ing out of this let­ter. The first, and to put sim­ply, is that the pro­hi­bi­tion has been lift­ed, and that lift­ing of the pro­hi­bi­tion re­mains in ef­fect un­til De­cem­ber 31, 2029.

“There­fore, what that means is that our fish­er folks can now go out to sea and con­tin­ue fish­ing….But I want to say this. Achiev­ing this goal was no easy task. It re­quired ac­tion with alacrity to set up a task force with spe­cif­ic lim­its and to col­lab­o­rate with a num­ber of peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions on a con­stant ba­sis as well as mon­i­tor­ing and re­port­ing to cab­i­net on de­vel­op­ments with NOAA”.

An­drews ex­pressed thanks to a num­ber of stake­hold­ers in­clud­ing the Or­gan­i­sa­tion of East­ern Caribbean States (OECS) Com­mis­sion, of­fi­cials from the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in Bar­ba­dos, and the Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO).

He said that the FAO as­sist­ed with the draft­ing of the leg­is­la­tion “ and they are still do­ing so”.

ST. GEORGE’S, Grena­da, Mar 18, CMC