A Chinese research firm with a background in both genetics and seafood is providing testing to seafood counters at Walmart stores around China in a bid to reassure consumers about COVID-19 contamination.
The Shenzhen-based Hua Da Hai Yang – also known as BGI Marine – is doing tests in-store with results labelled on stock to prove the goods show no evidence of COVID-19 contamination.
This is in response to a recent press conference organized by the State Council – China’s cabinet – at which it was announced that COVID-19 “contamination” was detected on boxes in a shipment of shrimp from Ecuador, emanating from three Ecuadorian firms: Industrial Pesquera Santa Priscila, Empacreci, and Edpacif.
China has demanded that any Ecuadorian product imported into China before 12 March must be recalled and destroyed. The top Ecuadorian public health official Juan Carlos Zevallos, meanwhile, has questioned how the virus could have survived 50 days in a container shipped from Ecuador to China.
Reporting on China’s latest COVID-19 detection in seafood has been noticeably less shrill than the reporting of a purported link between an outbreak of the virus in Beijing and a salmon stall in the city’s key wholesale food market, Xinfadi.
Walmart appears to be getting ahead of the story by hiring BGI, which traces its roots to 1999 when it was first set up in Beijing as a non-governmental independent research institute in order to participate in the Human Genome Project as China's representative. After sequencing the rice genome in 2002, BGI in 2003 decoded the SARS virus genome and created a kit for detection of the virus.
That could prove useful in the firm’s work for seafood sellers like Walmart. Staff at BGI’s Shenzhen office explained the firm is doing COVID-19 testing for a large roster of corporate clients.
Aside from its technical work for corporate clients, BGI is itself an importer and processor of seafood through a unit of the company. Its packaged products sold in China include Alaskan crab sticks alongside braised eel and Vietnamese porgy.
Meanwhile, there has been frustration in the seafood trade side within China, in particular among importers which are seeing margins enjoyed from imported product squeezed by the ongoing inspections and the closure of Ecuadorian imports.
A statement placed on the website of the China Fisheries Association – a lobby for seafood traders and fishery firms – noted that Ecuadorian seafood seized hadn’t tested positive for coronavirus. Rather the boxes “showed a risk” of having been contaminated by coronavirus, noted Liu Ya Dan, deputy secretary general of the China International Agricultural Products Trade Association.
Photo courtesy of Horth Rasur/Shutterstock
