July 4, 2007

 

US inspection of China's seafood worries Vietnam's exporters

 

 

As the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will inspect all seafood products from China, the action by FDA has Vietnam's seafood exporters anxious of their products.

 

Vietnamese seafood processing companies will meet this week to discuss FDA's action on China's seafood and its possible impact to Vietnam's seafood exports. The country is among the biggest seafood exporters to the US.

 

The Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) plans to gather its members on July 3 in HCM City where it would discuss issues affecting seafood exports, including shrimp anti-dumping lawsuit, antibiotic problem residues in the Japanese market, strict inspection by Russian authorities of farming and processing establishments, and the inspection by the US FDA of Chinese products.

 

The US is Vietnam's fourth biggest export market, consuming nearly 20 percent of Vietnam's seafood exports. Shrimp, tra and basa are the main items exported to the market.

 

FDA earlier stated all consignments of farmed seafood sourced from China, including shrimp, catfish, eel, red-eyed carp, will be strictly examined. The products will be detained at border gates to detect residues of prohibited substances not allowed to be used in aquaculture in the US.

 

FDA said that it had abundant evidence showing that Chinese farmed seafood products contained prohibited substances. David Acheson, Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection at FDA, said that the agency would only allow the admittance of imports that could meet the food hygiene requirements set by the US.

 

International Marketing Specialists, which specialises in providing shrimp and seafood products, has blamed FDA for its late actions in preventing unsafe products from entering the US market. He said that his company had been facing unsafe seafood problem for the last 3-4 years.

 

The company said China has, very likely, been exporting tainted seafood for many years and is probably doing the same for other food items. The fact that China has ordered the closure of several thousand food processing establishments confirms this, the company added.

 

International Marketing Specialists do not import shrimp from China any more.

 

Seven percent of shrimp and ten percent of catfish consumed in the US are from China.

 

From October 2006 to May 2007, FDA routinely discovered China-sourced seafood containing prohibited antibiotics, including nitrofuran, malachite green, dye, and fluoroquinolone.

 

Acheson said FDA's strict control over Chinese imports would last longer unless uit proves to keep safety control of its seafood products. He said exporters must provide information to show that they had done everything to ensure products were safe.