Australia strengthens Vietnamese seafood product testing
Staff Writer |
Vietnam's Government make a call to seafood enterprises for them to comply with international regulations for export in order to continue selling Vietnamese products to the Australian market.
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The recommendation was made by the National Agro, Forestry and Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (NAFIQAD) director Nguyễn Như Tiệp, who announced that his department had received a document from Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) about the inspection of seafood products imported to Australia, Vietnam News reported.
FSANZ informed food imported to Australia will be categorised into two groups of high-risk products and supervisory products, which will have different inspection frequencies applied.
The former includes products, such as boiled crustaceans/shrimp, mackerel/tuna, processed and instant fish, and mixed seafood, and monitoring products.
The Australian entity pointed out that these foods are initially inspected and tested at a rate of 100 percent of consignments and that once five consecutive consignments have passed inspection, the inspection rate may be reduced to 25 percent; after a further 20 consecutive passes, the inspection rate may be reduced to 5 percent.
Food under surveillance includes fish; fresh, frozen, dried and salted fish paste; sardines; salmon and fish sauces.
FSANZ explained that any consignment of high-risk and surveillance foods that fails forces a return to 100 percent testing of that product until a history of compliance is re-established for the producer of the food.
The export value of Vietnam’s seafood products to Australia increased sharply from $15 million in 2011 to $225 million in 2014, but it declined to $117 million in 2015, according to the Ministry of Industry and Trade’s vinanet.vn website. ■
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