By IPS Correspondents
DHAKA, Sep 3 1997 (IPS)

Bangladesh risks losing millions of dollars from frozen food exports, particularly of shrimps to European markets, unless its food processing plants enforce international safety standards by November.

The European Commission (EC), Bangladesh’s biggest buyer, discontinued fish imports for three months from Jul. 31 this year, after a fact-finding team said local fish processing plants are not adhering to safety norms.

The team which visited six shrimp processing plants in the coastal districts in June, found fault with the level of cleanliness, the water and ice being used, and said plant managers were ignoring rules on the personal hygiene of workers.

The ban has affected local fish exports to 15 countries in the EC. Europe is the country’s biggest buyer of frozen fish, followed by United States and Japan.

The EC said it has been urging Bangladesh since 1995 to adopt the HACCP or hazard analysis and critical control point method to monitor fish exports. The ban could be a tactic to force Bangladesh to take action.

In fact, the implementation of the ban order was put off for 15 days, until Aug. 15, after an appeal from Bangladesh to allow entry to consignments that had already been shipped to European ports.

Bangladesh is the third country, after India and Madagascar, to be barred from exporting fish to the EC. The reasons in all the cases are similar.

However, the EC has said it will review the Bangladesh ban in November or December this year if the Bangladesh government takes corrective measures for quality control in the shrimp processing plants.

The local fish industry is also under pressure from the U.S Food and Drug Administration to modernise operations at the shrimp processing plants by November this year.

A million dollar clean-up scheme has been initiated to upgrade 36 processing plants in Cox’s Bazar and Greater Khulna districts. Workers are also being taught how to ensure the water and ice are bacteria free, and are being provided with uniforms. The focus of the clean-up efforts is on personal and factory hygiene.

The EC market is most important for Bangladesh. Forty percent of fish sales abroad are to Europe, followed by the United States (30 percent) and Japan (20 percent). In the last fiscal year, Bangladesh earned 390 million dollars from fish exports — which adds up to 10 percent of total export earnings.

The flourishing shrimp export industry is also one of the country’s biggest employers. A slump in sales could throw thousands of people out of jobs, and ruin some of the country’s biggest entrepreneurs who have made fortunes on frozen food exports.

In fact, exporters of garments and frozen foods are part of Bangladesh’s new elite, a powerful lobby in the government. The clout of the shrimp export business has allowed it to prosper at the cost of the livelihood of huge numbers of marginal farmers, whose lands have been destroyed by shrimp farms.

An estimated half a million acres of arable land has turned saline ever since shrimp farmers cut embankments to let the sea water into their fish farms. Over the last decade, the ecology of the fragile coastal zone has also been altered forever.

Tens of thousands of poor farmers in the coastal districts have sold their land under pressure to shrimp farmers, who have used all kinds of coercive methods like abduction, rape, beating and filing of false cases.

Some farmers, who did not want to sell, rented their land to shrimp farmers. But even that is blatantly unfair. A farmer with 1.5 acres of land, for instance, is paid 310 dollars annually as rent, but the shrimp owner reaps a profit of about 5,000 dollars. Had the farmer been growing rice on his land, he could quite easily earn 800 dollars, a study estimates.

“Shrimp farming is a short-term gain for a few, and a long- term loss for the people, the land, trees, vegetables, cattle- wealth and the ecology,” commented a schoolteacher in Khulna district.

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