April 20, 2004
Philippines Fires Antibiotic Warning To Shrimp Producers
Shrimp producers in the Philippines have been warned against the excessive use of antibiotics in their farms or feeds, if they want to make Philippine shrimps more attractive to the international market.
According to Grace Mercado, general manager of Integrated Aquaculture Specialist, many of the countries buying shrimps, including Japan and members of the European Union (EU), are now strictly imposing maximum tolerable levels of various antibiotics.
"Do not even think of using antibiotics in your farm for the treatment of diseases, or use feeds suspected to be laced with antibiotics. It would be a disaster if any of our shipments is rejected and in the case of the EU, burned, due to the presence of antibiotics beyond tolerable limits," she pointed out.
"To add insult to injury, we do not merely lose our cargo totally. But what remains for the exporter is a bill from the EU for the incineration cost of the cargo," Mercado added.
The EU is the Philippines' second largest market for shrimps other than Japan.
To emphasize her point, Mercado cited China - a country which found it difficult to market its prawns in major markets because it has been blacklisted for the presence of antibiotics in its prawns.
"A lot of countries have become wary of imports from China. Thus China decided to use countries like the Philippines as the trans-shipment point for export to countries like the EU," she said.
Besides avoiding the use of antibiotics, Mercado said the country must also push its production figures up, and further improve the quality of production.
"One way of taking care of our buyers is to make sure we give them a stable supply of our products, and show them that we are reliable suppliers," she said.
With regards to quality, Mercado said only shrimps of good quality could be sold as head-on shrimps, which command higher prices than the head-less shrimps.
A shrimp head makes up about 38 per cent of the shrimp's total weight.
