Hanoi (VNA) - Despite a new USrequirement that foreign exporters demonstrate their food safety control systemis equivalent to American regulations, no backlog has been recordedin Vietnamese tra fish exports to that country. 

The US Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)began applying the new regulations for Siluriformes fish on August 2, insteadof September 1 as announced earlier, mandating the checking of all shipmentsfor records, packaging and labels.

Siluriformes fishinclude tra, basa, tre and lang fish.

The US is the second largest importer ofVietnamese tra fish, receiving 22 percent of Vietnam’s total exportsof the catfish. US imports of tra were worth 220.8 million USD in thefirst eight months of this year, up 3.3 percent over the same period last year.

Only three or four Vietnamese firms have beenable to export several tra products, including cut catfish, frozencatfish fillet, frozen rolled catfish and powdered fillets, to the US, said theMinistry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD).

A report from the Vietnam Association of SeafoodExporters and Producers (VASEP) showed that the country earned 1 billion USD fromthe export of seafood in the first seven months of this year, ayear-on-year increase of 8.2 percent.

Although tra fish exports to EU statesdropped 23.5 percent, new markets such as Brazil, Mexico, Colombia andSaudi Arabia were seeing steady growth.

In the first eight months of this year, theproduction of tra fish in Mekong Delta provinces reached 815,500tonnes, up 10 percent year-on-year. Dong Thap is the province with the largestharvest at 303,400 tonnes, up 25.4 percent over the same period in 2016.

According to the head of the Dong ThapAquaculture Product Department, Le Hoang Vu, tra fish are raised on1,504 ha in the province, more than 809 ha of which are certified under thestandards of VietGAP, GlobalGAP, Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) andAquaculture Stewardship Council (ASC).

The province has 20 seafood processing factorieswith a total designed capacity of more than 467,000 tonnes per year. It hasproduced an estimated 180,000 tonnes of tra fish in the first eight months ofthis year, reaching nearly 500 million USD in export turnover. The province plans to expand its breeding areato 2,000 ha by 2020, with an output of more than 541,000 tonnes of tra fish peryear.- VNA