China needs to stop worrying about increasing the volume of its aquaculture output and focus instead on improving food safety and quality levels, according to Jia Jiansan, deputy director of the aquaculture and fisheries bureau of the Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO), a body of the United Nations.
Jia gave a rare interview to China’s Shui Chan Pin Dao journal, which covers the seafood sector.
China needs to take zero-tolerance policy on chemical residue and ensure the quality of the environment in aquaculture production process, he said.
“China is already a global aquaculture power … we can no longer follow the old path of pollution first and remediation later … some environmental pollution is irreversible,” Jia said.
China’s seafood sector has a lot of space to improve competitiveness through “production efficiency” and increasing production of “deep-processed products” that meet growing consumer demand for convenience products, Jia said.
“China has been very good at doing this, but there is a lot of space for improvement,” he said.
Likewise, Chinese seafood and aqua-feed firms have much more room to expand sales in developing countries, said Jia, himself formerly an official at the fisheries section of the Chinese Agriculture Ministry.
