EU food team unhappy over quality control, lab standard

A European Union Food and Veterinary Office (EU FVO) team that visited the country’s fish and animal feed and hatchery projects last month, expressed its dissatisfaction over compliance of rules relating to quality control and reliability of laboratory test report.
The three-member team comprising Bruno Brigaudeau, Elzbieta Brulinska-Ostrowska and Lena Englund visited the country on January 18-28 to inspect the standard of the country’s fish production as per European standard.
The EU FVO would send their preliminary official report this week on their last month’s visit to Bangladesh, official said.
Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association (BFFEA) Vice-President Maqsudur Rahman told FE that Bangladesh might not face any problem as the EU team expressed satisfaction on the country’s adherence to Fish and Animal Feed Law and Hatchery Act.
“The EU team said these laws would regulate fish and animal feed production, prevent contamination and deal with other compliance issues and they are satisfied with cultivation and processing of prawns.”
He, however, said the team has shown disqualification over quality control and test report reliability of Bangladeshi labs, its monitoring system and lack of skilled manpower and drug issue.
“They have suggested that validation and accreditation of labs should be faster and a decision has been taken in this regard that BCSIR Atomic Energy Commission would help and train up manpower for operating the labs,” he added.
He said: “The EU FVO team was on a regular visit. They might include new conditions to improve the quality of shrimp, but we are hopeful about positive response.”
The EU team suggested that the fish and animal food processing factories should be brought under regulation and that there should awareness campaign at field level on Nitrofuran issue as they have found the antibiotic in some hatchery and spawning areas.
Mr Rahman said “The industry had suffered losses worth around Tk 7 billion last year for self imposition of a ban as shipment of such products were being cancelled on allegation of presence of Nitrofuran by the EU countries.”
“But after resuming fresh water prawn export to EU countries we have exported variety worth around Tk 5 billion within a month,” he added.
The country’s frozen food exports during the July-December period of the current fiscal year 2009-10 plunged by 17.90 per cent to $ 268.84 million over the same period a year ago, the Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) data showed.

Courtesy of The Financial Express