Although the media focuses on egregious instances of abuse of food quality and safety, as in our Bloomberg story today about Ngoc Sinh Seafoods in Vietnam, which had 81 rejections by FDA since 2007, the overall performance of China and Vietnam is rarely evaluated.
Using Urner Barry's FDA database on seafood import rejections, we have found that overall the rate of rejection of seafood imports from China and Vietnam has dropped significantly in the 3rd quarter of 2012 compared to the 3rd quarter of 2011.
First, overall FDA Trade Refusals of US seafood imports in 2012 fell 11% in the 3Q when compared to the same time a year ago as fewer rejections were noted from top suppliers.
The FDA rejected 231 shipments of seafood imports during the 3Q of 2012 compared to 260 seafood shipments during the 3Q of 2011.
China and Vietnam accounted for 32% of all rejections in the 3rd quarter of 2011. This year they accounted for 21%.
In fact, the reduction in rejections from China and Vietnam accounted for the overall drop in FDA rejections last quarter. In 3Q 2011, there were 84 rejections from these countries, and in 3Q 2012 there were 48. This is a reduction of 43%.
The following chart shows that reductions in rejections by China, Vietnam, and also Indonesia are responsible for the overall improvement in the rate of FDA rejections for seafood not meeting US import standards.
This suggests that both China and Vietnam are making substantial progress in improving the quality and safety of their seafood exports, but that does not fit the alarmist media narrative of either environmental organizations who oppose aquaculture, nor the interests of US domestic shrimp producers who have tried to scare customers away from imported products by focusing on health and safety lapses.
(seafood.com)