At the 2025 Responsible Seafood Summit, something new happened — for the first time, a main-stage session was held entirely in Spanish. But it wasn’t just about language. It was about perspective. It was about finally hearing directly from producers, exporters, and advocates from Latin America and the Caribbean — the people doing the work, navigating bureaucracy, climate shifts, and market demands every single day.
Moderated by Adriana Sanchez, and featuring Citlali Gómez (COMEPESCA, Mexico), Ernesto Rodríguez (Centro Acuacultura La Paz, Mexico), Oscar Botero (Piscícola Botero, Colombia), and Bill Hoenig (Global Seafood Alliance, USA), the session dug deep into the realities of building a responsible seafood economy in our region.
Informality and the Missing Middle
Across the region, informality is one of the most persistent barriers to growth. Small-scale farmers and fishers — the backbone of local production — often lack business registration, water-use permits, or access to financing. Without these, they’re invisible to programs and buyers that could help them scale responsibly.
But the problem isn’t just paperwork — it’s structural. Certification schemes and compliance systems designed in the Global North rarely fit the social or economic context of small producers in Latin America and the Caribbean. They make production more expensive and push many to operate outside the formal system.
The solution isn’t to copy and paste global models — it’s to innovate locally, creating scaled approaches that reward gradual improvement, shared infrastructure, and collective certification models.
Trade and Tariff Barriers
For exporters, trade remains a double-edged sword. On one hand, access to markets like the U.S. and Europe drives higher standards and better practices. On the other, tariffs, currency fluctuations, and diplomatic shifts can wipe out margins overnight.
For the region to stay competitive, governments must negotiate fairer trade timelines, invest in export infrastructure, and align local standards with recognized international frameworks to avoid duplicating costs for producers who are already stretched thin.
FSMA Traceability: A New Compliance Frontier
The U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has introduced a new layer of complexity for exporters to the U.S. The Final Rule on Food Traceability — particularly the requirement for standardized digital systems — is challenging even for large processors, but especially for small and mid-sized facilities that lack automation.
To comply, companies must homologate their software systems (often traceability systems like Trace Register) — an additional service that raises production costs. For those without automated traceability, it’s not just about installing software; it’s about changing entire workflows, retraining staff, and ensuring upstream suppliers can follow suit.
This regulation, while critical for food safety, underscores a regional gap: the lack of affordable, interoperable traceability solutions accessible to small producers.
European Market Aspirations: More Than a Certification
As the region looks toward Europe, the challenges shift from traceability to sustainability — in the broader ESG sense. Accessing European markets now requires evidence of compliance not only with food safety and human rights standards but also with environmental and social performance metrics, including:
- Deforestation-Free Production (EUDR)
- Living Wage Commitments
- Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets
For many producers, these are not abstract ESG goals — they are structural obstacles that require investment, measurement systems, and coordination across entire value chains.
Meeting these expectations will demand financial and technical partnerships, including access to carbon data tools, living wage benchmarks, and environmental footprint calculators that can translate local realities into measurable, globally recognized indicators.
Climate, Infrastructure, and Innovation Needs
The conversation also highlighted how climate variability, new disease strains, and inefficient distribution chains are impacting productivity. Without roads, processing infrastructure, and cold storage, it’s nearly impossible to deliver consistent quality or attract investors.
Participants agreed that sustainability won’t come from new labels alone — it will come from investing in infrastructure, biosecurity, and farmer resilience. That means water management systems, faster vaccine access, and research on local species genetics that fit regional conditions.
Building Awareness at Home
Finally, the group emphasized that regional sustainability won’t only be built for export — it has to start with local demand.
There’s a huge opportunity to educate domestic consumers about what responsible seafood means, why certifications exist, and how buying local can directly improve livelihoods and environmental outcomes.
As one speaker put it:
“Consumers in the Global North ask where their fish comes from. We need to make sure our own consumers ask the same question.”
Looking Forward
Latin America and the Caribbean have the people, the culture, and the biodiversity to lead the next phase of responsible seafood production. But for that to happen, trade policies, certifications, and financing mechanisms must evolve — not just to include small producers, but to build on their strengths.
Creating Space for Regional Collaboration
If there’s one lesson from this first-ever Spanish session, it’s that we need more spaces like this — where voices from across the region can come together, learn from each other, and collaborate.
From Mexico to Colombia to the Caribbean, we share similar challenges: informality, infrastructure gaps, climate risks, and financing hurdles. But we also share solutions — innovations born from necessity, pilot projects that worked, and community models that are quietly transforming the industry from the inside out.
Creating these spaces to connect and exchange knowledge is not just valuable — it’s essential.
Because progress doesn’t happen in isolation; it happens when we see ourselves as part of the same regional story, learning, adapting, and building together toward a more resilient seafood future.
The message from the first-ever Spanish-language session at the Responsible Seafood Summit was clear:
“Sustainability in seafood cannot just be imported — it must be built, owned, and led from within our region.”