ccording to the Status of the Stocks report published by the International Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF ) in March 2021, 87.6 percent of the commercial tuna catches worldwide continues to be sourced from stocks at “healthy” levels of abundance, 9.6 percent came from overfished stocks, and 2.8 percent came from stocks at an intermediate level of abundance. In 2020, tuna catches in the major fishing grounds remained stable while some price increases occurred for frozen tuna for the canning following increased demand for end products in the global canned tuna market.

During the 2020 review period, tuna raw material imports increased in most of the large processing countries in Asia and Europe. Compared with 2019, imports in Thailand were 18 percent higher at 800 000 tonnes, including 42 815 tonnes of cooked frozen loins (+20 percent). In the Philippines, imports of frozen skipjack (mostly used to produce canned tuna) increased by 3 percent to 110 520 tonnes. Meanwhile, frozen yellowfin imports declined by 22 percent to 45 000 tonnes due to weak demand for non-canned tuna in the international trade. In Europe, Spanish tuna canners imported less whole/raw tuna (-8 percent; 159 100 tonnes) as domestic landings increased, but more cooked frozen loins (+8 percent; 107 600 tonnes) for reprocessing in 2020. Cooked loin imports also increased in Italy (+20 percent; 43 100 tonnes), Portugal (+41 percent; 12 000 tonnes) and France (+6.8 percent; 8 550 tonnes).