Mark Godfrey

Contributing Editor

Mark Godfrey is an Irish journalist covering the agriculture and fisheries sectors in Asia, with a focus on China. Proficient in Mandarin, he has frequently traveled across China's fisheries and aquaculture regions and learned the inner workings of China's corporate world during a nearly three-year stint at the Financial Times' “China Confidential” publication. He has also reported widely across Southeast Asia and the former Soviet Union. He has educational certificates in agriculture and food science, as well as Mandarin.


Author Archive

Published on
December 2, 2022

Home to one of the world’s largest fishing fleets and tuna-processing industries, Taiwan has recently faced increased scrutiny of its labor standards for its distant-water fleet. 

In an interview with SeafoodSource, Chih-Sheng Chang, director-general of the Fisheries Agency at the Council of Agriculture in Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, the country’s executive branch of government, discussed the government’s efforts to

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Published on
December 1, 2022

The Chinese organizer of a meeting of nations bordering the Indian Ocean has been rebuked by the Maldives for claiming it had sent officials to attend the event.

Organized by the state-run China International Development Cooperation Agency (CIDCA), the inaugural China-Indian Ocean Region Forum brought together representatives of 19 countries in the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming on 21 November, 2022.

But an official statement from the

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Published on
November 30, 2022

The recently introduced Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, signed into law in the U.S. in December 2021, has relevance for seafood importers, according to a lawyer advising American seafood firms on compliance.

Jessica Rifkin, an attorney at Glen Burnie, Maryland, U.S.A.-based Benjamin L. England and Associates, said the law – which came into effect 21 June, 2022 – will impact the seafood industry despite the far-west location of

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Published on
November 29, 2022

Singapore Crawfish is planning to build a 5,000-square-meter grow-out facility in the heart of Bangkok, Thailand.

The company’s Bangkok growout facility will feature the container recirculating aquaculture system (CRAS) produced by Hatch Hives.

Singapore Crawfish distributes crawfish fries from company hatcheries located in Malaysia and Singapore to contracted farmers, who then sell him finished crawfish back after a typical growing time

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Published on
November 28, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted major shifts in Chinese seafood consumption patterns, favoring value-added products and pre-prepared meals for home consumption. And seafood companies are starting to respond by offering increasingly complex pre-prepared meal options – in effect, replicating restaurant meals.

Packaged convenience food – often referred to in Mandarin as prefabricated, became mainstream during COVID, according to

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Published on
November 25, 2022

China has confirmed it will sign a free-trade deal with El Salvador, which could see Chinese investments flowing into the Latin American’s country seafood sector.

The country’s ambassador to China, Aldo Álvarez, said earlier this year that Chinese companies were keen to invest in the fisheries sector in El Salvador, a central American country in the South Pacific.

“They’re interested in seafood. We don’t have

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Published on
November 25, 2022

Financial problems are slowing China’s planned expansion into Antarctica’s krill fishery.

Rising costs are among the reasons for the shelving of plans for krill trawlers by various Chinese fishery firms. At one point, 15 Chinese companies had plans to build krill trawlers, among them Pingtan Marine, which later canceled its plan for a krill vessel.

In 2019, Shanghai Chong He Industry Group – also known as Chong

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Published on
November 23, 2022

Irish fishing representatives are demanding that the European Union refuse Norway’s request for greater access to Irish quota for blue whiting.

Irish fishery industry bodies claim Norway is pushing the E.U. to increase a transfer of quota by 158 percent to 80,000 metric tons. Irish Fish Processors and Exporters Association CEO Brendan Byrne termed the fish a valuable export-oriented species “concentrated in Irish

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Published on
November 23, 2022

Shanghai, China-based food-delivery service Pang Pang Xiang (China) Co. has filed for an initial public offering on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong.

The company hopes to reverse the fortune of other China-based food-delivery companies, including Missfresh and Dingdong Maicai, which have seen their valuations plummet after going public.

It remains to be seen what if any investor appetite appears for Pang Pang Xiang shares if the IPO

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Published on
November 22, 2022

Chinese online retailer JD.com lifted its sales of frozen seafood by 102 percent year-on-year in value terms during the first 28 hours of its 2022 Singles Day Grand Promotion.

The shopping holiday, the Chinese equivalent to the popular U.S. and European shopping extravaganzas known as Black Friday and Cyber Monda, began 11 November.

China’s e-commerce vendors have benefitted from the country’s zero-COVID policy, which has pushed more

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