Indian seafood exporters awaiting a report from the European Union on the state of its food safety protocol are expressing optimism that an upcoming report will show positive results.
Several Indian officials and executives involved in exporting Indian shrimp said they believe the E.U. mandatory import consignment rates will soon be lowered from 50 percent to 10 percent.
MPEDA official Prem Dev told SeafoodSource that Indian inspection officials were in attendance at meetings between stakeholders in the Indian shrimp exports market to the European Union and E.U. officials at Seafood Expo Global on 25 April. The feedback from the E.U. officials was positive, Dev said. An inspection team from the European Union visited India in November 2017 and while the results of that audit were not released at the meeting, there were productive discussions on the use of antibiotics in shrimp aquaculture in India. Dev also said that Indian delegation asked the E.U. team to consider their decision to deregister Indian seafood exporters after a single flagged shipment, as it has had a financial impact on Indian seafood firms.
Dev told SeafoodSource that E.U. official[s] visited India again this Month and “they will be coming out with a report in June 2018.”
“We are hopeful that the mandatory check of 50 percent of consignment will be brought down to 10 percent and the [currently] deregistered companies will be [re-]registered soon," the MPEDA official added.
The E.U. accounts for about 18 percent of India's seafood exports, valued at USD 5.7 billion (EUR 4.76 billion). The E.U. is apparently still not satisfied with the current controls of primary production of shrimp in India and has serious concerns regarding the use of antibiotics in Indian shrimp.
A spokesperson for the Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI) said that seafood exporters are taking care of this problem at the primary level and have been regularly in touch with shrimp famers to improve education and practices at the individual farm level.
Speaking on this, Digha Seafood Exports Director Prabhat Kumar said that majority of the problem of antibiotics are found from consignments from Andhra Pradesh state. Shrimp farmers there are overexploiting their farms, resulting in a shrimp density higher than in other Indian states, Kumar said.
Shrimp farms in Andhra Pradesh aim for around three products cycle a year, but in other states like West Bengal, farms only go for one or two cycles, Kumar said. That causes problems in primary management, as many farmers are skipping fallow periods that allow tanks to dry and disinfect. The farmers then use antibiotics to fight resulting higher levels of disease.
Though traces of antibiotics can be found in shrimp from other states, Kumar said that is a result of processing plants mixing shrimp from Andhra Pradesh in with product sourced from other parts of the country.
