Chinese seafood shoppers have been spooked by a new outbreak of the coronavirus in the country’s capital.
Wholesale markets have been shut down across Beijing as the country appears to be blaming the outbreak on imported salmon. The country’s social media platforms are awash with rumor and conspiracy theories about the virus traveling through salmon.
“It’s incredible, people who ate sushi recently are now asking to be tested,” one Beijing resident told SeafoodSource. “We were in a restaurant and all the salmon dishes had been crossed off the menu.”
Supermarkets have likewise taken salmon from freezers, said the source, who lives in the Chaoyang district, which is home to a large number of Japanese-style restaurants, where much of the country’s salmon consumption occurs.
Authorities in Beijing have announced 79 COVID-19 cases are linked to the Xinfadi wholesale market, a giant wholesale market with distribution networks reaching north to provinces like Shandong and Liaoning.
Smaller markets in residential areas of Beijing that take produce from Xinfadi have now been shuttered. Among them is Yuquandong market, where shoppers contracted a strain of COVID-19 linked to the outbreak originating in the Xinfadi market. The neighborhoods around the markets have been locked down, but local authorities have not yet initiated a broader, city-wide lockdown.
The new outbreaks in Beijing are bad news for the thriving imported salmon sector, which had just been getting back on its feet after the lifting of the months-long lockdown of Chinese cities, which began in January.
In the key seafood production and processing province of Shandong, a government body coordinating all coronavirus efforts has also called for a tightening of inspections that could slow down inbound seafood shipments to ports like Qingdao.
The Shandong Provincial Leading Group for the Treatment of New Coronavirus Pneumonia Outbreak called for inspections to be stepped up at all entry ports.
The provincial office of the Administration of Market Regulation in Henan, China’s most-populous province, has called for a tightening of inspections on all imported seafood. That may mean delays in imported stock entering the market.
Shares in Joyvio, the Chinese firm that bought salmon producer Australis Seafoods in 2018, slipped in trading on Monday, 15 June, with its share price falling 3.65 percent due to news of the coronavirus link to salmon. The firm, a unit of the technology-focused Legend Holding Group, is one of several that have piled into salmon imports or trading, among them Guolian Aquatic and the agrifeeds and solar energy conglomerate Tongwei, which has set up a salmon research academy to find business opportunities in the product.
Others see a political aspect to the latest news and see a rush to link the new COVID-19 outbreak to an external source.
“I am surprised that there hasn’t been any COVID found in Australian beef,” a European-born, Beijing-based business consultant told SeafoodSource. The source was referencing the Chinese ban on Australian beef on spurious health grounds after Canberra criticized Beijing’s handling of the original coronavirus outbreak.
In a statement provided to SeafoodSource, John Connelly, the president of the National Fisheries Institute, a trade group representating the U.S. seafood industry, pointed to a statement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administrating asserting that "food or food packaging have not been associated with transmission of COVID-19 and that there is 'no reason to be concerned' about transmission of the virus from food."
"Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control, World Health Organization, and the European Food Safety Agency all emphasize this finding," Connelly said. "Seafood, including salmon, continue to be among the healthiest food consumers can choose. Reports to the contrary are not science-based."
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
