February 22, 2010

Bangladesh seafood quality control fails to satisfy EU inspectors

An EU Food and Veterinary Office team was unsatisfied over Bangladesh's compliance of rules relating to quality control and reliability of laboratory test reports for fish, animal feed and hatcheries.

The team visited Bangladesh on January 18-28 to inspect the standard of the country's fish production as per European standard.

While the EU team was happy on Bangladesh's adherence to the Fish and Animal Feed Law and Hatchery Act, the team was less than impressed from the quality control and test report reliability of Bangladeshi labs, its monitoring system and lack of skilled manpower and drug issue.

Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association (BFFEA) Vice-President Maqsudur Rahman, said the team suggested that validation and accreditation of labs should be faster and a decision has been taken in this regard that BCSIR Atomic Energy Commission would help and train up manpower for operating the labs.

The EU team suggested that the fish and animal food processing factories should be brought under regulation and that there should awareness campaign at field level on the nitrofuran issue as they have found the antibiotic in some hatchery and spawning areas.

Bangladesh's shrimp sector had suffered losses of around BDT7 billion (US$100.86 million) last year for the self-imposition of a ban when consignments to the EU were found to be contaminated with nitrofuran.