April 29, 2010

Vietnamese seafood farmers need to improve on their sanitation methods as customers have now become more serious on food product safety, said experts at a conference on Sunday (Apr 25).

The EU market accounts for nearly 26% of the US$4.1-billion export turnover of Vietnamese seafood last year, said Nguyen Xuan Khoi, a director at Intertek Vietnam, which is part of a global laboratory network providing testing and inspection services.

"But EU is a choosy market that has a lot of strict demands on food safety and hygiene.

"EU customers not only study carefully the conditions of the producers and traders but they also want to know details about the product's origins such as where it was bred or caught, what was it fed, how was it taken care of and what the environment was like during the breeding time," Khoi said.

Thus, the Europeans would choose to buy from processors and traders that own a good system where many factors affecting the safety and hygiene of the products can be monitored closely, he said.

Khoi was speaking at a conference titled "Vietnamese seafood: Potentials for development and integration", organised in the Mekong Delta's Can Tho City as part of the Vietnam Seafood Festival 2010.

The EU starting January 1 issued strict regulations against illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. And it also insisted that aquaculture products meet Global Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) standards.

Vietnam as of now has only one prawn farm area and four catfish farm areas that meet the standard, Khoi said.

He said it's hard for Vietnam seafood farmers, most of them in the Mekong Delta, to obtain the certification. They are operating on a small scale and do not have control over clean water supply or diseases.

The trend these days is that consumers are willing to pay more to receive safe products, Corsin said.