June 17, 2011
Vietnamese seafood contains excessive antibiotic residues
The US, EU and Japan have given warnings about Vietnamese seafood containing antibiotic residues that surpass permitted levels.
So far in 2011, however, exports to these regions have been rising, informed the Vietnam Association of Seafood Processors and Producers (VASEP).
Between January and April, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found that around 100 batches of Vietnamese seafood violated the requirements on labelling and chemical and antibiotic contamination. The US, the second leading export market for Vietnamese seafood, has thus issued a number of warnings about antibiotic residues in seafood, said VASEP General Secretary Truong Dinh Hoe.
"That warning, however, does not reflect the real situation," he said. "Because the FDA's inspection system is an automatic warning system, that means when a batch of imports is detected to have antibiotics, microbiotic contamination or wrong labelling, the system automatically puts the names of the exporting company onto a list of companies to receive a warning upon their next batch of imports before they are inspected again."
"In fact, most of those batches had not met requirements on product content labels, and a few of the batches had contamination with antibiotics such as histamine and chloramphenicol," he added.
In the EU, its Rapid Alert System for Food Safety and Animal Feed (RASFF) issued rapid alerts that 45 Vietnamese seafood exports had been rejected due to contamination with the antibiotics chlorpyriphos, trifluralin and chloramphenicol, among other causes.
During the same period, Vietnam's shipments to Japan, its third leading seafood buyer, issued warnings for 33 batches of imported shrimp due to antibiotic residues.
"Japan has reduced the maximum level of antibiotic residues to a very low level, so the number of Vietnamese seafood export batches violating these regulations has increased recently. Vietnamese exporters have not had an opportunity to update its control of antibiotic residues to comply with these new regulations," Hoe explained.
He went on to say that as Japan found that two batches of Vietnamese shrimp had antibiotic residues this month, one more instance of this will lead to strict control of Vietnam's seafood imports by Japan by testing 100% of shrimp consignments for trifluralin and enrofloxacin.
VASEP has thus advised that seafood enterprises apply rigorous testing of seafood to prevent financial losses and damage to Vietnam's reputation. The agency has also asked state administrative agencies to take coordinated steps to protect seafood exports to Japan and the EU.
Furthermore, the administrative agencies must update their regulations on chemicals and antibiotics to help the companies be more proactive, Hoe said, and state authorities should mandate that provincial authorities control the circulation, distribution, consumption and use of restricted substances.
The cases of antibiotic contamination, however, will not affect export targets for the year, he added, because exporters will promote seafood exports to other markets.