EU team to inspect India's fish farms

Even as the Indian seafood industry faces rough weather thanks to stiff export rules, a team of European Union experts is coming to check the quality controls at the fishing and aquaculture farms in India.

According to officials, the EU team consisting of Gianluca Fiore, Giulio Gallo, John Mc Evoy and Stefano Sotgia will begin their India visit on October 17. In the first phase, the EU experts will check fishing farms, seafood testing laboratories, feed mills and seafood processing plants at Kochi, Nellore and Chennai.

The EU team then will visit a number of honey-making plants in Delhi and Punjab. The EU experts' visit follows rejection of a number of Indian seafood consignments by various European nations in the last one year.

The European exporters say that the Indian seafood contain antibiotic residues and traces of heavy metal, especially in fish and fish products. "So the EU team is coming here to check the residue and hazard analysis at our food processing plants," a senior official of the Ministry of Food Processing told rediff.com.

Following the EU nations' rejection of Indian seafood consignments, a few months back the Indian government had sent a three-member team to Europe to sort out the food safety issues.

European nations have come out with new regulations that state any container of seafood found testing positive for chloramphenicol, the banned drug residue, would be destroyed completely. With each container of seafood valued at around Rs 1 crore (Rs 10 million), this move has badly affected Indian seafood exports to the EU.

Detection of the antibiotic chloramphenicol in seafood products exported to the EU and America is the biggest problem that Indian exporters face these days. It has led to the outright ban and detention of shrimp imports in European countries and the US.

In this context, Seafood Association of India president Abraham Tharakan said that the EU team's visit to India is significant because it would be an occasion for them to get a first hand knowledge of the various quality control measures that the Indian seafood exporters take.

Tharakan said that it is not the EU nations alone that are increasingly scanning the food varieties sent from India. "In fact, the biggest threat to Indian seafood has come from the United States. The US is now seeking anti-dumping probe against shrimp imports from 16 countries including India and China," Tharakan pointed out.

A few months back, an eight-state alliance in the US called the Southern Shrimp Alliance led by Louisiana demanded punitive anti-dumping duty ranging from 40 per cent to 200 per cent on shrimp imports from India and others. The alliance alleged that export of shrimp from these countries have been well below 'fair value' causing 'injury' to the US industry.

Tharakan said the Indian exporters have already requested the Vajpayee government to counter the SSA move. "Because we feel that the allegations of dumping by the US are baseless. We export only quality products," Thakaran added.

India's marine export industry is a huge Rs 6,790-crore (Rs 67.9 billion) business. Exporters like Tharakan fear that tougher rules from the US and European nations will considerably affect the Indian marine food industry in the months to come.