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K.G. Kumar

A FISH a day keeps the doctor away, say health enthusiasts, pointing to the rejuvenating omega-3 fatty acids found in most species. Not surprisingly, therefore, consumers in the developed world are especially finicky about the quality of the fish they buy.

They can never get it fresh or pure enough. That explains the growing shift to products that bear some kind of eco-label, like the certification programme of the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for seafood that meets environmental standards for sustainable and well-managed fisheries.

The MSC is an international non-profit organisation formed as a joint initiative of the World Wide Fund for Nature and the Anglo-Dutch food multinational, Unilever.Through its five-year old eco-labelling programme, six fisheries have been certified so far, while another six are currently undergoing assessment. Over 100 companies today stock supermarket shelves with MSC-certified seafood products.

An MSC eco-label assures consumers that they are choosing environmentally sound products. It also helps them recognise fisheries that meet currently accepted international standards for sustainability and management.

Consumers are prepared to pay a premium for healthy food. Newsweek magazine estimates that between 1997 and 2001, the worldwide market for organic food has more than doubled, from $10 billion to $21 billion. And the market is growing at 15-20 per cent every year.

Undoubtedly, quality is going to be single most important factor for successfully accessing the food markets of the developed world. But the Indian seafood trade has yet to abandon its slapdash approach to quality, going by the recent rejection by some EU countries of Indian seafood consignments containing residues of antibiotics like chloramphenicol and nitrofuran. Shrimps - the prized commodity in India's basket of seafood exports - were the ones mostly affected.

Significantly, the EU has banned, from this year onwards, the import of cultured shrimp from China because of residual chloramphenicol. As a result, China has been robbed of an annual export value of nearly $300 million.

India could well be next in line for a similar ban, given the widespread use of antibiotics in the shrimp aquaculture farms of Andhra Pradesh, the major producer of cultured shrimp.The Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA) is trying commendably hard to educate farmers about the dangers of antibiotic usage.

But ranged against such efforts are formidable forces like pharmaceutical hardsell, technical advice by sundry "consultants", and the inborn greed for quick profits.

Remember the craze for semi-intensive shrimp aquaculture and the consequent outbreak of diseases like epizootic ulcerative and white spot syndromes? Those who forget the past, said American philosopher George Santayana, are condemned to repeat it. He could well have had the Indian seafood trade in mind.

In the late 1970s, seafood exporters struggled to upgrade their processing facilities from primitive block freezing to individual quick frozen and accelerated freeze dried techniques.

Simultaneously, and well into the early 1980s, the trade had to surmount another obstacle - contamination by salmonella and E. coli pathogens. More recently has come HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point), a system of process control that was developed by the US National Aeronautic and Space Administration in preparation for space flight and has since been adopted in many industries as a tool to control, reduce and prevent pathogens in meat and poultry.The latest EU action is just another foghorn in the Indian seafood trade's voyage to international standards. But quality pays. The sooner Indian seafood producers and exporters realise this, the faster will they be able to sing all the way to the bank.

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