Indian seafood exporters may go under the scanner of European Union, the third largest market of India, due to increasing incidence of traces of antibiotics being found in the seafood products exported from India.
Speculations are rife among UK importers that EU is considering a ban on aquaculture product from India though there is no authentic official data available from EU Commission on such a move.
In 2016-17, EU accounted for 18 per cent of the total $ 5.78 billion seafood exports from India. Trade sources said that there are increasing rejection of Indian shrimps for presence of antibiotics like Nitrofurans and metabolites, AOZ and chloramphenicol. But of late the rate of rejection has come down. EU Commission is also believed to be banning factories whose products have been rejected.
"While the commission has not taken any official action yet (the issue does not appear on any EU agendas), the future of Indian aquaculture imports is looking bleak. DG Sante (the Directorate-General Health and Food Safety) is seriously worried about the continuing finds of antibiotics in Indian shrimp and dissatisfied with the response so far of the Indian authorities", an advisor of Seafish, which represents the UK seafood industry, wrote to the importers.
It may be noted that the commission is extremely dissatisfied both with the continued non-compliances and the lack of progress made by the Indian authorities.
"In the light of what we know, it would be no surprise if we see the commission put up a proposal at the standing committees that Indian aquaculture product be banned completely. The commission is having a summer shutdown at the moment, so no meetings will be taking place until September. We will look out for developments", the advisor said.
Last year, EU had strengthened its inspection norms for aquaculture products sourced from India. Earlier, the norm was testing of samples from at least 10 per cent of the consignments which was enhanced to 50 per cent in 2016.
"EU is a major market for Indian shrimps. At least 19 per cent of the total exports are directed to this market. Aquaculture shrimps constitute about 60 per cent of shrimp exports. So any such move would badly affect exports and reputation and trust of Indian shrimps would come down. This would have negative ramifications for seafood industry", said Rajen Padhi, Director, Exim consultant and a seafood trader.