The National Fisheries Quality and Veterinary Directorate (Nafiqaved) has asked Russian authorities to put off their plan to inspect Vietnam’s seafood processing establishments until March, citing a busy schedule and the Lunar New Year festival.
The inspection was slated for this month, but the National Fisheries Quality and Veterinary Directorate (Nafiqaved) said it would be too busy receiving many foreign delegations arriving to learn about and examine Vietnam’s aquaculture from now until the end of February.
Besides, the Tet Lunar New Year Festival, the most important traditional event in Vietnam, would fall on the second half of February, it said.
Nafiqaved said it had sent a letter to Russian Federal Service of Veterinary and Phytosanitary Inspection asking for the delay.
The Russian agency earlier announced it would send a mission to inspect the Vietnamese aquaculture and seafood processing industry in order to short-list businesses qualified for exporting to Russia.
Its inspectors would learn about the quality control over aquatic products, collect information about animal epidemics, and examine the aquaculture and processing facilities.
While waiting for the Russian side’s reply, Nafiqaved was trying to make a list of enterprises that could meet the requirements for exporting products to Russia, said Tran Bich Nga, Deputy Head of Nafiqaved.
Among the 315 seafood establishments that have been granted certificates on meeting requirements on exporting seafood in general, 198 bases have been short listed as meeting the requirements on exporting to Russia, she said.
The list would continue to be updated as more enterprises register to export to Russia. However, the final list would be decided by the Russian side after inspection, Nga added.
Nafiqaved said it would soon receive the inspection delegation from the European Union’s directorate on health and consumer protection, under the framework of a program controlling prohibited substance residues in farmed seafood.
It would work with a delegation from the Cambodian Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry which comes to learn about experiences on fisheries quality control on February 4-10.
Besides, Nafiquaved would work with officials from the French Food Safety Agency who come to exchange experiences on control of veterinary drugs used in aquaculture.
The New Year Festival holiday this year will be on February 17-22 and all businesses close for the event.
However, Nafiqaved said, in case the Russian inspectors insisted on working in January as planned, it would arrange time to work with them.
According to international rules, most countries in the world apply intensive control measures to particular categories of import products that don’t meet quality and safety standards, said Nga.
“But Russia is now different,” said Nga. “Russia will now ban the import of an entire product if the institute finds any category of the product to violate the country’s safety standards.”
She took Russia’s recent rice import decision as an example.
On December 4, 2006, the Russian authorities put a ban on the import of all rice products from Pakistan, India, Spain, Thailand, Egypt, China and Vietnam, citing different reasons for each country, she said.
This means that Vietnam could lose over $150 million in seafood product exports to Russia if even one shipment or product goes wrong. (VnExpress)
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