Malaysian seafood industry in troubled waters

The seafood industry in the country will lose about RM900mil of festive season sales to Europe due to a delay in the re-audit visit from the European Union’s (EU) Food and Veterinary Office (FVO).

Malaysia Shrimp Industry Association (MSIA) president Syed Omar Syed Jaafar said the visit had been scheduled to take place between Oct 13 and Oct 24.

“The re-audit visit was postponed by the authorities because certain monitoring procedures, facilities and infrastructure such as landing areas in ports that they supervise are not ready,” he told the Malaysian StarBiz Newspaper. “However, our members have upgraded their production sites and are ready for the re-audit visit.”
The EU imposed a ban on seafood from Malaysia in June following a visit in April by the EU’s FVO and Malaysian health authorities to the country’s seafood processing companies, their facilities, landing ports, fishing vessels, and seafood farms.

Since the ban in June, prawn farmers in the country have incurred losses of about RM500mil. The total annual output of prawns from farms in Malaysia is about 70,000 tonnes, and about half are sold to seafood processing companies exporting to Europe.

There are about 1,000 prawn farmers in the country, of which 300 are MSIA members. “From July till December, customers in EU would start buying seafood from Malaysia to stock up for the Christmas and New Year holidays,” Syed Omar said.

The expected 8,7 billion Baht loss is due to two reasons. First, the prawns targeted for sale to local seafood companies that export to Europe are now infected with white spot disease due to overstaying in the ponds.

“This loss is estimated to be about 3, billion Baht,” he said. Prawn farmers in Perak, Kedah, and Tawau in Sabah have reported that their prawns had contracted white spot disease.

The other reason is that the prawns destined for the European market have had to be sold domestically at lower prices since June. This meant a loss of about 25 Baht and 49 Baht a kilo for white and tiger prawns.

“The loss due to the difference in pricing is estimated to be about 970 million Baht,” Syed Omar said.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Frozen Food Processors’ Association president Ch’ng Chin Hooi said its members had incurred losses of about 9,7 billion Baht since the ban in June, including about 3,8 billion Baht during this festive season in Europe. A source said a re-audit on the local seafood industry could be done next March, provided that the Malaysian authorities were to extend an invitation in December for the FVO to come over.

“The FVO officials are not able to come over next month or in the first two months of next year,” he said.

Source: The Star Malaysia