December 22, 2009
Bangladesh to pass new fish and animal feed regulations
The Bangladeshi government is set to pass a tough new law to regulate fish and animal feed manufacturers.
According to the director general of department of fisheries Rafiqul Islam, fisheries and livestock departments have formulated a draft Fish and Animal Feed Law, which is expected to be tabled and passed in the winter session of the house.
The move came after cancer-causing toxic antibiotic, nitrofuran, was detected in Bangladeshi fresh water prawn exported to the EU countries early this year. The EU sent back the consignments, seriously affecting the image of the country''s frozen food industry and raising fear for the future of fish export from Bangladesh. Thus, the government promptly imposed a voluntary ban on the shipment of the particular prawn species in May this year.
The ban has yet to be lifted although the frozen food exporters and farmers have declared that they have eradicated nitrofuran from the prawn food chain.
Officials blamed rogue fish feed manufacturers for passing the harmful nitrofuran into the shrimp being farmed in the country''s hundreds of thousands of ponds and sweet water bodies.
Islam said the broad aim of the law is to regulate the country''s scores of feed makers and importers, who very often sell sub-standard and adulterated fish and animal meals, exposing millions of people to deadly diseases like cancer.
He commented that farmers use the contaminated feed and antibiotics to fatten domestic animal and rear shrimp in the ponds or low-lying plains. Feed ingredients they use such as protein concentrate and oil cakes were found to have been contaminated with harmful metabolites and chloramphenicol.
In addition, he said that farmers use poultry litter to fertilise ponds or as feed ingredients, which has already been detected as a major source of harmful antibiotics, such as nitrofuran.
Maksudur Rahman, vice president of Bangladesh Frozen Foods Exporters Association (BFFEA) hailed the proposed law, saying it would ensure quality of the fish being cultivated in the country.
Rahman, a leading shrimp exporter, said imported feed ingredients such as protein concentrates like meat and bone meal, dried shrimp and oil cake would be free from banned antibiotics after the enforcement of the law.
"Our farmers use 22-25% locally produced feeds and 70-75% imported feeds. But both are found to be sources of metabolites of banned nitrofurans and other hazardous chemicals," he said.
A Bangladesh Quality Support Programme (BQST) study has recently revealed that 160 kinds of shrimp, fish, poultry feed and feed ingredients are available in Khulna, Bagerhat and Jessore districts - the main shrimp farming region of the country.
The study found that 11 out of 36 shrimp feeds, 10 out of 29 fish feeds, eight out of 23 poultry feeds and nine out of 72 feed ingredients were contaminated with nitrofuran metabolites and chloramphenicol.