By now, you would have heard that Malaysian seafood exports could be slapped with a EU ban.
What’s gone wrong?
From reports, we hear that:
“… there are infrastructure and facilities such as fishing vessels, fish landing ports, and fish and prawn farms, which are lagging behind the standards set by EU,”…
Random checks conducted on nine seafood companies exporting to Europe found six of them lagging behind in health standards and practices set by the EU… (The Star)
From the IHT:
A spokesman for Malaysia’s Fisheries Department, who declined to be named citing protocol, said there had been complaints on the way fish and seafood were being transported to ports such as lack of wash basins onboard.
From an earlier Star report:
According to the (EU) draft, some two-thirds of the vessels and establishments visited were found to be not in compliance with EU requirements.
It also highlighted the lack of traceability and counter-measures to check the spread of diseases.
Funny how it takes the EU to tell us what’s wrong with our seafood. The Malaysian regulatory authorities and the food-processing companies cannot escape responsibility. They have a duty to ensure that their purchases conform to the highest health and safety standards. They should have conducted more random checks of their own. Public health is at stake.
While the EU will only come up with a decision on 18 June, what about the sales of seafood locally? Are we only concerned about the financial health of the seafood industry?
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Twitter: samgoh88
When you want to eat food that’s good
The first choice is normally seafood
Now it’s placed under EU’s health hood
The love for seafood isn’t in our mood
(C) Samuel Goh Kim Eng – 110608
http://MotivationInMotion.blogspot.com
Wed. 11th June 2008.
mr anil,
i think what we see in one sector, can be generally applied across the board. most of the business, especially the older ones were started from traditional family businesses. when they try to expand or convert the family business into a full fledged one, they usually encounter all sorts of steps to be taken before they are qualified to be one (usually bureaucratic). as they are investing a large sum of money for the conversion, in order to be able to access the higher export markets, they would just try to meet the minimum requirements as cost effectively as possible.
take for example a poultry farm, as the business expand, land is bought, buildings are built and some sort of sop is implemented along with qc. this is all done under the auditing of government officers from several departments. and as we know, that is a headache in itself due to the well known lack of coordination among the agencies. on another note, the standards in the country are different from global standards. standards are set of course by the government and the awareness/stringency of society. in malaysia food prices need to be kept low, therefore the additional measures of ensuring safe, healthy food produced is not the priority. however due to a higher level of awareness in EU, they might be bound to provide safe and healthy food for their citizens in fear of legal repercussions or simply due to their position as modern societies which afford them to be picky, like going to organic grocers to pick out the best produces if you can afford them.
I don’t understand how this problem arises.The former minister has asked for bilions of fund to help the fishing industry in Bolehland and i think he owes the RAKYAT an explanation. He must reveal his cronies’companies which were offered contracts and he must explain to the Parliament who are the cronies that received most of the subsidies. I think there’s a lot of hanky-panky out there.Since this is a very serious matter which tarnishes the good name of the country and many people’s earnings are at stake, a special Royal Commission must be set up to investigate the whole thing. AAB must sack the minister and punish him for the mess-up if found guilty of mis-management and corruption.
If you go to the green mussel processing “factories” along Selat Teberau in Johor… it is indeed in an unhygienic situation… I’ve seen the pictures taken by Jabatan Perikanan…. The government must teach factories about cleanness and give incentives and guidance for them to make their “factories” more hygienic… up to some standard….
Malaysians,Singaporean, Indo and Thais eat Malaysian seafood – sure OK. European makan the same sea food – maybe cerek berek. Hygiene std for Malaysian seafood (frozen or not) is not up to EU std and that is a fact and all in the frozen seafood ind knows this. Either we improve our hygiene std or live with current hygiene std and lose EU mkt. Anyhow, our hygiene std is better than many countries.
Hei, think the ‘mak salahs’ cannot consume our local seafood. That’s good. Then it means more seafood for the rakyat to enjoy. Now we can enjoy better grade seafood ( our standard ) instead of eating the cast offs.
Then, investigate what happen to the ’subsidies’ for all that the ministry has ‘invested’ to this industry and yet getting this sort of image.