Nearly 60 percent of quality problems in Chinese aquaculture products relate to overuse of antibiotics and anti-bacterial agents, according to a major research report on product safety.
The report, “Quality and Safety of Aquatic Products in China,” was co-released by the Food Safety Risk Management Research Institute of Jiangnan University and the Zhoushan Ocean Research Center at Zhejiang University, both leading institutions for seafood research in China. It concludes that Chinese aquaculture has a worse record on excessive chemical residues than other major food categories, such as livestock or tea production.
According to the report, the national qualified rate of aquatic products monitoring in 2017 reached 96.3 percent, which was 0.4 percentage points higher than that in 2016, but while lower than that of livestock and poultry products and tea, this figure represents a dramatic increase on the figure of 88.1 percent recorded in 2005.
Illegal use of anti-bacterial agents like malachite green, furan, and chloramphemicol remain a major threat to the quality and safety of Chinese aquaculture output according to Lu Xun, representative of Zhoushan Ocean Research Center of Zhejiang University. China’s fragmented aquaculture production scene continues to overuse readily available and cheap chemicals to ward off disease, according to Lu.
Photo courtesy of China Aquaculture Network
