Contributed by Dr. Md. Kamal, National Consultant, BQSP- Fisheries, UNIDO, and Ms Maliha Naureen, School of Environmental Science & Management Independent University, Bangladesh.

Shrimp culture in Bangladesh has emerged as a big industry over the last three decades although shrimp culture in greater parts of the farming area is done in traditional ways. Bangladesh government has also taken necessary measures along with the private sectors to increase production, upgrading processing industries and to promote export performance. Long supply chain of raw material collection, inadequate infrastructure facilities, poor level of maintaining cool chain and lack of adequate HACCP based training on hygiene and sanitation among the different people involved in field level are the main problems of quality loss of raw materials. Shortage of raw materials resulted poor capacity utilization of the processing plants. The bagda (P. monodon) hatchery sector has expanded rapidly over the last few years mostly concentrated in Cox’s Bazar region is enough to meet the target production. However, there is a shortage of pelleted shrimp feed in Bangladesh. A large number of export processors are now producing increasing amounts of value-added products such as individually quick-frozen, peeled and deveined, and butterfly cut shrimp, as well as cooked products and the export earning from value added products is about half of the total export value. About 95% of total fish products are exported to European countries, USA and Japan and remaining is exported to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Most of EU approved shrimp processing industries have been upgraded with laboratory facilities and provided HACCP training to the workers. As of now, HACCP is applied on the processing plants, but to ensure the quality of raw materials and to reduce risks, shrimp farms are also required to adopt HACCP plan. There is increased pressure from importing countries for fish processors time to time to establish effective quality assurance systems in processing plants.  FIQC of the Department of Fisheries has moderate laboratory facilities equipped with chemical, bio-chemical and microbiological testing facilities and qualified technical personnel, but so far there is no facility available for testing of antibiotics. FIQC mainly supervise quality aspects of the processing plants and has little or no control on raw material supply chain from farm to processing plants. Bangladesh export consignments sometimes face rejection due to poor quality of the products.

Three types of barriers were reported for export of shrimp to EU countries. These are:(i) Government Participation in trade and restrictive practices (state aid, countervailing duties, state trading enterprises, government monopoly practices), customs and administrative entry procedures (anti-dumping duties, customs valuation, classification, formalities, rules of origin); (ii) Technical Barriers to Trade or TBT (technical regulations, standards, testing, certification arrangement) and(iii) Specific Limitations (quantitative restrictions, import licensing, embargoes, exchange control, discriminatory sourcing, export restraints, measures to  regulate domestic prices, requirements concerning marking, labeling and packaging).

For details you can visit download option of BQSP website (http://www.bqsp.org).