Kochi, May 22 The European Union has rejected three shrimp export consignments from Sri Lanka and one each from India and Bangladesh for the presence of the metabolite nitrofuran above the prescribed levels, a rapid alert notification issued by the EU on Wednesday said.
The metabolite nitrofuran was found in a consignment of headless giant freshwater prawn exported from India to Belgium on May 12.
The EU also detected the presence of cadmium above the prescribed levels in frozen and whole cleaned octopus exported from India to Italy.
The consignment of giant freshwater prawn would have been dispatched from India much before the new testing and certifying scheme was in position, Mr Anwar Hashim, President of the Seafood Exporters Association of India (SEAI), said.
Though six new testing laboratories have been set up in Andhra Pradesh from where most of the scampi consignments seems to have originated, the testing and certifying process is just falling into place.
But once the process is complete, instances of EU rejections would be far lower, he said.
Going by the lesser frequency of rejections for nitrofuran in the recent past, the initial measures seems to be proving effective.
Even the latest consignment would have left the Indian shores a month ago, Mr Hashim said.
It takes three to four weeks for an Indian seafood consignment to reach Europe’s major ports. For smaller ports, it can take even longer.
There is transshipment involved from India’s smaller ports at either of the large ports at Colombo or Salalah.
The fall in rejections could also be due to an advisory sent out by SEAI to exporters to be extremely cautious when exporting scampi consignments to Europe.
While scampi exports can be contained, abolition of use of nitrofuran-based antibiotics in Indian hatcheries is likely to prove far more difficult.
This is because the nitrofuran-based antibiotics are not only very effective for the newly hatched scampi, but also cheap and quite cost effective. Alternative antibiotics are not only costly but have also not been widely tested in Indian conditions, sources in SEAI said.
The presence of cadmium above the permissible levels was detected in frozen and cleaned octopus from India to Italy on May 13.
The presence of cadmium above permissible levels in Indian seafood is due to excessive industrial pollution of Indian seas. The contaminated Indian industrial wastes get into the food cycle of seafood and its presence may be found in the intestine and suckers of seafood like octopus.
While the intestine would have been thoroughly cleaned, its presence might have gone undetected in the tentacles and suckers of the octopus. SEAI sources said that the coasts of Gujarat have been getting increasingly polluted due to increased industrial activity like petroleum refining, ship breaking yards and cement plants.
Source : Business Line