A culinary staple and symbol of the Chesapeake Bay’s fisheries economy is under siege from a surge in unregulated crabmeat from Venezuela, a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote to President Joe Biden on Friday, urging the administration to investigate the situation.
Eleven lawmakers, including senior members of Maryland and Virginia’s congressional delegation, wrote that the dumping of uninspected, poor-quality Venezuela crabmeat into the United States is a threat not only to domestic crabbers, but to sellers and consumers of crab.
“Chesapeake Bay crab fisheries and processors follow a strict set of regulations to ensure that the Bay remains one of the most sustainable crab fisheries in the world, that the blue crabs harvested there are of the highest quality, and that the industry does no harm to other species,” the lawmakers wrote. “Foreign competitors often confront little or no such regulation.”
The lawmakers, who included Democratic Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin of Maryland, and Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia, along with Democratic Reps. John Sarbanes, Dutch Ruppersberger, Kweisi Mfume, David Trone and Glenn Ivy of Maryland and GOP Reps. Rob Wittman of Virginia and Andy Harris of Maryland, said much of what’s labeled domestic blue crab comes from other countries.
