The abuse of antibiotics and seafood veterinary medicine all have put Vietnam’s tra and basa fish at a disadvantage on the world’s market.

In an effort to deal with this issue, a seminar on sustainable growth of tra and basa fish farming was joint organized by Ministry of Fisheries and the Netherlands Embassy from 21 to 23 May, 2007 in Can Tho. At the seminar, tra and basa farming procedure was disseminated to all invited farmers and processing companies.
Massive growth will lead to epidemics

 Dr Karin van de Braak, Expert from the Netherlands’ Wageningen University, said that tra and basa cultivation and processing in the Cuu Long River Delta had been growing dramatically in the last few years. An Giang, for example, had 100 ha of water surface area for tra and basa cultivation in 2004, while the surface area had unexpectedly increased by seven times just one year later. In 2006, the figure rose to 1,200 ha.

The massive and uncontrollable growth of aquaculture has led to many bad consequences, the worst of which is the appearance of many infectious epidemics. Statistics show that some 30-35% of farmed fish suffer from diseases caused by bacteria and parasites, according to Mr Karin.
 
Epidemics lead to loss of export markets

In order to deal with fish diseases, fish farmers try to use many types of drugs, including antibiotics. Meanwhile, many export markets in the world now set stricter requirements on food safety which do not permit the residues of many substances in imported seafood.

As the result, the number of rejected seafood exports has been on the rise: 80 consignments in 2003 and 215 in 2005. Most of the consignments were found as containing Malachit Green, Oxytetracyline, ß-lactamin, quinolone, aminosid and many other kinds of antibiotics.

Controlling fish’s health is the key solution

Siemelink, an expert on veterinary drugs under the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, said that the production and trading of veterinary drugs was always strictly controlled in European countries, and that strict control should also be taken in Vietnam. He also said that in order to maintain sustainable development it was necessary to discover ways to control epidemics and ensure fish’s health.

Nguyen Tu Cuong, Head of the National Fisheries Quality and Veterinary Directorate, said that if Vietnam did not follow the regulations on sustainable farming, it would face immeasurable consequences: polluted environment, fish and human epidemics, and loss of export markets
 
What standards for Vietnam’s tra and basa?

Dr Karin has urged Vietnam to implement EurepGAP standards for Vietnam’s tra fish if it wants to retain the EU market for the long term. During the farming period, farmers must follow SQF steps (safe quality food – the quality programme recognised by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI)). During the raising of breed fish, there is a must to make a list of check-up items such as pond hygiene, food, source of water supply, etc. In later steps, appropriate attention should be paid to ensure that water, level of rubbish in raising ponds, food…are at required conditions.

As a conclusion to the seminar, Deputy Minister of Fisheries Luong Le Phuong has stressed the importance of biology safety measures and suggested that the best solution is to invite experts from the countries that import tra and basa to Vietnam to give advice on farming and processing fish.

Some suggested biology safety measures:

+      Carefully select and sterilize the farming site
+ Carefully select the breeding fish from reliable sources of supply, breeding fish should be certified not to carry any epidemics.
+    Conduct farming with reasonable density, water supply to farming site must be clean.
+    Periodically classify fish, do not raise variety of fish in the same site
+  Use certified food and carefully supervise the consumption of food
+       Remove dead fish from farming site every day
+ Use appropriate amount of chemicals and remedy