Bridges Trade BioRes • Volume 7 • Number 11 • 8th June 2007

Meeting the Challenges of Transnational Aquaculture

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With close to half the world’s population consuming farm-raised fish, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) recently convened a conference on aquaculture to address sustainability, safety concerns, and market trends in the rapidly growing sector.

Organised in conjunction with the Chinese agriculture ministry, the conference took place place 29-31 May in Qingdao, China.

Aquaculture is the most rapidly increasing food production sector. In 1980, farmed fish accounted for only 9 percent of all fish consumed by humans. Today, that proportion has surged to 44 percent and international trade has boomed.

“With nearly half of all fish eaten today coming from farms, and some 12 million people dependent on fish farming for their daily income, ensuring that farmed fish products are safe to eat and of the highest possible quality is crucial,” said Lahsen Ababouch, the FAO’s fish safety expert.

Food safety concerns have been dominant in the aquaculture sector after recent discoveries that some US fish farms were feeding the toxin melamine to fish intended for human consumption. US health officials also discovered that certain foreign fish imports contained prohibited antibiotics, prompting a nationwide ban on the products in question. FAO officials pointed to these incidents as indicative of the challenges of ensuring safety in international fish production and trade.

Ninety-eight percent of the world’s fish farmers are based in developing countries. The conference addressed how small-scale, low-income farmers can cope with the increasingly strict regulations on aquaculture imports and exports “The challenge is making sure that benchmarks used to judge safety are grounded in sound science and that fish farmers, whether they be from a developed or developing country, are not unfairly disadvantaged,” said Ababouch.

ICTSD reporting; “Fishfeed scare highlights challenges of aquaculture boom,” FAO NEWSROOM, 28 May 2007.