MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

EU temporary bans access to Uruguayan fish produce

The European Union temporarily suspended export certificates for three Uruguayan fish processing plants and questioned the country's Fisheries Department regulations' compliance system, confirmed sources from Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries.

The decision adopted this week followed a sanitary and procedure in situ inspection by a EU experts' mission, of several Uruguayan fish processing plants. Uruguay's Fisheries Department, Dinara later suspended export licenses to another four plants. Uruguay in 2007 exported 80 million US dollars of fish produce to the EU. "What has happened is extremely serious although the EC was a couple of steps ahead of us since we also had plans to temporarily shut down those plants for their non compliance with export regulations", admitted Dinara's director Daniel Montiel. But the EU also questioned some of DINARA procedures regarding monitoring and controls, and found that some of the pharmaceuticals used by the industry to verify samples were out of date. Conditions in some of the Uruguayan flagged fishing vessels also came under scrutiny to ensure they complied with the EU sanitary protocol. The EU inspection team said that until the involved companies do not clearly and effectively comply with the failings discovered, "they will not be able to export any fish produce to the EU". The decision comes as a severe blow for the Uruguayan industry since almost 40% of the country's total fisheries exports (200 million US dollars last year), were shipped to the EU in 2007. Industry sources said that they are very concerned because of the impact this decision, involving a prime market, could have on shipments to other destinations, including the fish trans-shipment which takes place in the port of Montevideo that has become a hub for the fleets operating in the South Atlantic. Montiel said that a team of Uruguayan vets from Dinara and the Ministry of Agriculture will be visiting Brussels in the near future to present a package of measures to address EU concerns plus a timetable for the compliance with the sanitary and procedural systems. However this is not the first time Uruguayan fisheries face EU alerts and temporary export bans, mainly because of the presence of certain contaminants detected in random testing in Europe. "We're talking of six specific cases that activated the EU food quick alert system which is triggered when an anomaly is detected. The exporter and country involved are immediately informed as well as the possible causes of such a situation", said the EU vet office in Montevideo. Fish processing plants as happens with (meat) abattoirs are routinely inspected by the EU Food and Vet Office which work all over the world to ensure food quality and the same standards for all imports. "It's a routine procedure to protect EU consumers and EU animal health standards", said Montiel. Uruguay has 110 fishing vessels registered of which only a fraction must comply with the EU sanitary protocol.