January 28, 2007	Sunday	Muharram 08, 1428

KARACHI, Jan 27: The four-member European Union (EU) inspection team flew back on Saturday after completing inspection of the Fish Harbour and its export-related areas. The team will submit a comprehensive report to the Marine Fisheries Department of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) after one month about their findings during their visit from January 22-27.

Exporters said that the team had pointed out some minor deficiencies in various areas and asked the Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) and the stakeholders to rectify them.

However, Director General MFD Commodore (Retd) S.Q. Raza said it was premature to throw light on the observations and findings of the EU inspection team over the hygienic conditions of auction halls, and processing units etc.

He, however, did not comment on the general impression of the EU team about the harbour and other exported-related areas, but simply said there is still room for improvement at the harbour.”

Chairman Pakistan Seafood Industries Association (PSIA), Sardar Mohammad Hanif Khan said that the team looked happy over the overall situation, especially about hygienic conditions prevailing at the harbour and other areas like processing units, auction hall etc.

In view of last meeting with the team on Thursday night, it is assumed that the team will present a satisfactory report to the MFD about the seafood export sector, he added.

However, the team members had pointed out that the temperature of the cold storages, which is minus 18 degree centigrade, might have been different for the fishery items packed in cartons and boxes placed in the middle of the storage. They said that efforts should be made to maintain the core temperature of the cold storages at minus 18 degree centigrade.

The delegation, he said, has also pointed to the processing units to ensure traceability of fishery products right from the catching vessel to the final consumers. This should be maintained with batch number of the catching vessels through production at the processing plants up to the end users.

At present, manual traceability is maintained by giving batch number to the vessel up to the processing pants and after that a batch number for whole day production is given by the processors, which is maintained till the final consumers. Whereas, as per the EU inspection team members’ point of view the batch number of each boat should be maintained till the end.

Temperature of raw material (fish and shrimp) on arrival in the auction hall or at the processing plants should be one to two degrees centigrade. The team found a little bit higher than the required temperature. This can be maintained by adding more flake ice in the insulated fish boxes by the fishermen.

He said that it was time to improve the entire Fish Harbour, including auction hall, ensure up gradation of remaining fishing fleet and remove minor deficiencies as pointed out by the inspection team. However, he said that the government and the stakeholders had fulfilled a number of previous guarantees needed by the EU during the last visit.

The share of fish and fishery products to the EU countries stood at $43m out of the total country’s export of $196m in 2005-06.