April 29, 2007	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 11, 1428

KARACHI, April 28: The European Commission (EC) has sought comments and guarantees from the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (MINFAL) by May 2, 2007 in response to its draft report highlighting the deficiencies of fish processing units leading to suspension of seafood export to the EU countries from April 12.

Meanwhile, confusion has gripped the fish exporters whether the Marine Fisheries Department (MFD) has sent the comments and guarantees to the MINFAL for onward submission to the EC or not. The sudden replacement of MFD Director General Commodore (Retd) Syed Qamar Raza at this stage is also irksome. The new DG Allah Rakha Aasi will take charge from Monday.

The EC had sent the detailed draft report to the MINFAL early this month which included main findings, recommendations and summary of deficiencies concerning to the fish processing plants after an EC mission conducted a detailed inspection of fish processing plants and other facilities from January 22-26, 2007.

“We have requested the MINFAL and MFD to take the stakeholders into confidence before giving any guarantees and comments to the EC,” Chairman Pakistan Seafood Industries Association (PSIA) Sardar Mohammad Hanif Khan told Dawn.

He recalled that in the last EC inspection in 2005, MINFAL had provided the guarantees unilaterally without consulting fish exporters. As a result the guarantees were partially fulfilled. In real sense the guarantees were actually to be fulfilled by the processing plant owners and they should be consulted, he added.

Hanif said in case the outgoing MFD DG had already sent the comments and guarantees to the Food Ministry before his removal then the exporters must be consulted on this issue by the new DG before forwarding these guarantees to the EC.The EC had carried out the inspection in January 2007 as a follow up mission to verify the implementation of the corrective measures contained in the action plan that Pakistani authorities provided in response to the recommendations of the inspection visit conducted in 2005. The January 2007 mission revealed serious deficiencies at all the stages of processing and distribution of fishery products.

According to the Mission Report, the establishments involved in exporting fishery products showed serious deficiencies and the sanitary quality of the fish was extremely poor.

The PSIA chairman said that the deficiencies pointed out by the EC were not so much severe and it could be removed. He claimed that most of the deficiencies had already been removed and the MFD can verify it so that exports to the EU countries could be resumed immediately.

Currently, items like squid and cuttlefish, which were basically destined for the EU, were now being exported to the Middle East and Far Eastern markets but in very low quantity because of very thin landing at the harbor.

Real impact on fish exports will be felt in months of August to October when kiddy shrimps, a main requirement of the EU countries, would not be exported.