The country's first fishery production standards will be
introduced next year as part of efforts to ensure food quality,
officials have said.
Farmers carrying buckets of chub return from a
fishing trip at a reservoir in Zhangyu County, Jiangsu
Province.
The new standards will include 100 items and focuses on those
most relevant to fishery products safety, including fish breeding,
quality inspection, disease prevention and reporting and fishery
feed and drug usage, Vice-Minister of Agriculture Niu Dun said
yesterday.
Niu was speaking at an annual aquatic food production conference
in Beijing.
Experts have said that a considerable number of fishery products
in the country still come from unregulated fishermen and
small-scale farms.
"Unified professional standard will help us get correct
information on breeding and ensure product safety," Chen Zhongshi,
the owner of a small fishery farm in Anhui Province, said.
A number of provincial regions already put in place their own
fishery production requirements.
Fishery authorities in Shandong Province invested 100 million
yuan ($13.6 million) to standardize 13,000 hectares of fisheries
this year.
The move has helped every fisherman in the region earn an
additional 300 yuan in annual income due to better harvests, Hou
Yingmin, the head of Shandong marine and fishery department, said
yesterday.
The Ministry of Agriculture will also build 200 pilot breeding
bases in the country with supervisory systems on feed and drug
usage next year, Niu said.
There are currently 350 such bases in the country and all have
complete safety control measures covering production, drug usage
and sales.
Niu said his ministry will also promote professional aquatic
food veterinary practices to ensure that all aquatic diseases
affecting fisheries get proper attention.
Some of China's aquatic foods were found with hazardous drug
residues last year.
The United States also banned in June four types of seafood
products from China for allegedly containing illegal drug
residues.
"These trade disputes have caused a huge slide in our fishery
exports and has had negative effects on aquatic production in some
regions," Niu said.
Ministry figures showed that the total volume and value of
China's aquatic food exports during the past 11 months had seen
their lowest increase year-on-year since 1999.
To further restore consumer confidence, food safety agencies
have launched special inspections of drug residues this year, which
covers 20 major fishery provinces and municipalities in the
country. Some 19,600 fishery farms and markets had been inspected
by last month.
Niu said that tests carried out by the ministry found at least
95 percent of Chinese aquatic products met food safety
standards.
(China Daily December 25, 2007)
