The announcement above was brought out by The Russian Federal Service for Veterinary and Physio-sanitary Surveillance (VPSS). Russia claimed that Vietnamese Pangasius products was infected by bacteria and impurities, plus the ice layers was thicker than usual.
 
Earlier in May 2007, Russia has suspended importing Pangasius products of 4 Vietnamese and 2 of Chinese companies as failing to ensure the hygiene and food safety.
This suspension is a big damage to seafood enterprises because Russia has been a potential market of Vietnam for so long. Vietnam is the 2nd largest supplier of seafood to Russia (account 8%), after Norway (account 30.3%).

What important here is that product exported to Russia must be qualified by the Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqaved) before exporting. However, all the shipment exported to Russia has been returned as Russia has discovered many shipments were infringed the requirements of hygiene, and the ice layers was too thick.

In 2007, Russia has imported more than 60 thousand tons of seafood form Vietnam, worth 110 million USD. In current, there are 34 Vietnamese enterprises exporting seafood to Russia. In the first 10 months of 2008, Vietnam has exported to Russia 193.6 million USD in general.

To ensure a sustainable development of market share in Russia for the coming time, the requirements of food hygiene must be set first and should be maintained continuingly.

In the structure of products exported to Russia in first 7 months, frozen fish hold 47.63%, followed by fillet fish which hold 18.6%; fresh and freeze fish hold 6.5% and the processing products hold only 6%.

Source: VF

Translated by Vietfish Community