U.S. Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture has announced that Vietnam, Thailand, and China are eligible to export siluriformes fish, including pangasius and basa, to the United States.
FSIS said in separate final conclusions released on 1 November that, after reviewing the three countries’ laws, regulations, and inspection systems, it has determined that their siluriformes fish inspection protocols are equivalent to the system that the U.S. has established under the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) and its implementing regulations.
Under these final rules, which will be effective 30 days after the date of publication in the Federal Register, only raw Siluriformes fish and fish products produced in certified establishments in Vietnam, Thailand, and China are eligible for shipping to the U.S. But all of these products are subject to re-inspection at U.S. points-of-entry by FSIS inspectors.
Measuring the potential impacts from the latest rules, Vinh Hoan, Vietnam’s biggest exporter of pangasius to the U.S., said on 2 November: “Passing onsite inspections was by far the most significant step in the initial equivalence process for all three countries, but Vietnam has mattered the most as it accounted more than 90 percent of the U.S.’s Siluriformes fish imports from 2013-2018.”
The U.S. has kept importing pangasius from Vietnam, China, and Thailand since the USDA took over the authority to maintain the safety of the fish from U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as FSIS has allowed shipments to continue while the investigation is under way.
FSIS, however, terminated the imports of pangasius to the U.S. from 11 other countries, including India, Bangladesh, Guyana, Nigeria, Pakistan, Myanmar, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Mexico, and the Gambia, as these countries fail to file their self-reporting tools, according to Vinh Hoan.
Pangasius has faced higher barriers to entry into the U.S. as a result of it being placed under a separate seafood inspection program as most other seafood entering the U.S., which is inspected by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) last month announced that the U.S. will remove the antidumping duty imposed on pangasius products from Vietnam in its preliminary review of the 15th period review (POR15) for the period from 1 August, 2017, to 31 July, 2018.
Vietnam exported pangasius worth USD 208.3 million (EUR 186.5 million) to the U.S. in the first nine months of this year, sliding 43.6 percent year-on-year, according to data from Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP).
Photo courtesy of the Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP)
