July 28, 2010

Europe tightens safety checks for Indian seafood imports

With seafood exports to India's biggest export destination, the EU, facing turbulent days ahead, the trade is beginning to look to the East for support and safety.

"Exports to the EU are beginning to get tougher and costlier as new conditions such as inspection of 20% of aquaculture export consignments have become mandatory," Anwar Hashim, President of the Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI), said.

The new LCs will also have to incorporate conditions stipulating that the exporter will have to bear the additional demurrage duties as well as the cost involved in shipping the consignment out of EU if it is rejected, traders said.

However, traders also pointed out that most of the established exporters from India would have built up long standing relationships with their EU importers and the threat of the buyer sourcing his import requirement to another exporter in another country is slim. But for the new and inexperienced exporters the chances of increased loss of business can be high.

All aquaculture products exported from India are to be accompanied by analytical test reports on the absence of of chloromphenicol, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, chlorotetracycline and metabolites of nitrofuran, or that they are at permitted levels, the European Commission decision No 2010/381/EU has stated.

The decision, which has come into force for Indian exports from July 9, 2010, also states that the EU will subject at least 20% of aquaculture imports from India to the above parametres at the Border Inspection Ports.

Explaining the complexity of the new decision, Hashim pointed out that there are 85-90 entry points into the EU and there is uncertainty as to how the procedure will be implemented.

The new procedures could put off the EU importers as they will not be sure if their import contracts could go for extra inspection and thereby delay arrivals at their warehouses and ultimately to the shop shelves in the European supermarkets. Some of them are likely to explore the possibilities of confirmed deliveries from other sources, export sources said.

Meanwhile, the EU was the biggest export destination for Indian marine products and accounted for 30.07% of the total value last year. The year also saw the East overtaking the West in the total value of marine exports, with China accounting for 17.73%, South-East Asia with 14.61% and Japan with 12.96% of the value. Indian seafood exports to new destinations such as Russia and Vietnam have great potential, the exporters said.