Cabinet approves amendment to export of fishery products regulations 2010 |19 February 2020
Mr Ally (Photo: Jude Morel)
Amendments to the Export of Fishery Products (Sanitary) Regulations 2010 were last week approved by the cabinet, to allow Seychelles to remain in line with the requirements laid under the European Union (EU) legislation.
The amendments, proposed by the fish inspection and quality control unit, the competent authority for sanitary controls and certification of fish that is exported and a division of the Seychelles Bureau of Standards (SBS), follows a sanitary audit conducted by the EU in 2018, where it was found that certain provisions in the local legislation are yet to be amended to reflect the changes in EU law.
Chief executive of SBS, Andy Ally, explained that the unit is governed by the Export of Fisheries Products Act 1996, under which four sets of regulations are pertaining to sanitary measures and standards that need to be in place when exporting fish to the EU.
“The amendment is focused mainly on contaminants found in fish, namely, lead, cadmium and mercury and serves to ensure our national laws are in line with the standards required by the European market, our biggest fish export market. It must be noted that we already had laws in place applying to levels of contaminants but increasingly, the EU is becoming stricter, as it is our main export market. Even before we amended the law, the unit was ensuring that it does not exceed the existing limits and it must be noted that even if the stated limits appear to be more stringent, there has not been an occasion were we exceeded the limit as we make sure to guarantee that EU customers are eating something,” Mr Ally noted.
The EU prescribed limit for lead in muscle meat of all fish should not exceed 0.3 milligrammes per kilogramme of fish and this applies to crustaceans and molluscs as well. As for cadmium, the prescribed levels have been further tightened to 0.050 milligrammes per kilogramme of fish.
According to Mr Ally, the changes will not result in any changes in the amount of fish and fish products exported to the EU.
“These contaminants occur naturally in the sea and there tends to be a trend that the bigger the fish contain more contaminants in their flesh. We have our control systems and measures and as you know, the SBS laboratory is accredited in testing for cadmium, mercury and lead, the three main contaminants, meaning our laboratory are capable of testing for such contaminants and other countries trust our readings. So we need to ensure strict controls on our side so as not to harm the reputation of Seychelles and for instance have the EU issue an alert that a consignment of fish is no good or such situations,” Mr Ally added.
There are currently 13 registered purse-seiners in Seychelles and the small-island nation exports around 80,000 metric tonnes of tuna and 50,000 to 60,000 metric tonnes of canned tuna annually.
“Increasingly, Seychellois companies are being listed for exports. Last year, Ocean Basket, Providence was added to the list to export to Europe. It is definitely a plus since we are pushing diversification of our exports and value added products. There are more local companies who will soon be added to the list and one requirement to be registered is that they need to meet the standards stipulated by the EU,” Mr Ally said.