Category: News From Asia

Agriculture: U.S. State Requires Catfish Origins

Vietnam News Brief Service
July 8, 2010

Tennessee State government in the U.S. has issued a new law to require country-of-origin labeling on catfish products from the Mississippi or the Mekong Delta since July 1, said the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).

This is the third state after Mississippi and Arkansas to require restaurants and retail stores to tell customers where they get their catfish, with a view to make catfish safer for consumers and to help level a playing field for American catfish farmers.

However, the law will not hurt Vietnamese tra and basa fish exports to the market as the products are not classified as catfish given a 2002 federal mandate, Truong Dinh Hoe, general secretary of VASEP was cited by the Thoi Bao Kinh Te Sai Gon online newspaper as saying.

He added that most Vietnamese tra and basa fish products are exported to California and eastern states.

Vietnam earned $539 million from exporting 250,000 tons of tra and basa fish in the first half of this year, up 13% and 21% on year, respectively.

Vietnam: Unqualified seafood for export on alarm

Vietnam News Summary
May 6, 2010

Along with facing the unrecovered export price and the material shortage, seafood companies also have to confront many difficulties when many Vietnam’s seafood shipments for export violated seriously the food quality standards in the first three months of 2010.

Through examining the residues of banned chemicals and antibiotic at enterprises, it showed that the main reason of Vietnam’s unqualified seafood came from the pre-processing period such as breeding, material preservation after catching. So, Vietnam is proposed to strengthen the supervision on import, distribution and usage of veterinary medicines.

Vietnam Association for Seafood Exporters and Processors (Vasep) reported that the number of Vietnamese seafood processors and exporters having good preparation for getting Certificate of Origin (C/O) and Global GAP of EU is very small.

In January-April, the country’s seafood export earned $1.2 billion dong including $350 million of April, growing by 17.4 percent year-on-year. EU continues leading Vietnam’s seafood buyers, followed by Japan and US. The target of seafood export turnover at $4.5 billion in 2010, a year-on-year growth of 7.1 percent can be reached but Vietnam could miss the target if not dealing with the aforementioned problem absolutely.