No quarantine of imported frozen processed aquatic products for food use

Seafood imports by air. Photo:T.H

According to VASEP, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has sent an official dispatch to report on the results of handling VASEP's recommendations, in which the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has listened and resolved difficulties that persisted since 2009 for the seafood sector.

Accordingly, in the second quarter of 2022, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development will issue a Circular amending and supplementing Circular No. 26/2016/TT-BNNPTNT in the direction of not implementing quarantine for frozen processing aquatic products used as food imported for export production, export processing and not for domestic consumption.

According to VASEP, in 2021, VASEP received many complaints from seafood exporters about processed products from animals, animal products or products containing “aquatic animals" (frozen, dry goods, canned, cooked, ready-to-eat) which were still on the list of subjects to quarantine specified in the Circulars on "quarantine" of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development: Circular No. 26/2016/TT-BNNPTNT, Circular 36/2018/TT-BNNPTNT, and Circular 15/2018/TT-BNNPTNT. Notably, most and mainly frozen aquatic products used for food.

The list of goods subject to "quarantine" according to the provisions of the above circulars is very wide. Imported containers are subject to 100% inspection, no matter for what purpose they are imported (export processing or for domestic consumption) and any history; taking a sample is applied when there is doubt about goods imported for export production, export processing and 20% of shipment/year for goods imported for domestic consumption.

The above regulations lead to a very large scale and a number of items and consignments subject to specialized inspection.

Regarding the proposal to remove the quarantine regulations for imported processed seafood products for domestic consumption that are assessed as having no risk of spreading aquatic diseases into Vietnam (processed seafood in the form of frozen, goods used as food for humans), the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that it has issued Circular No. 11/2021/BNNPTNT on HS codes under its management.

Accordingly, processed aquatic products such as dried, smoked, chemical, salted, fermented, etc. have been removed from the list of items subject to quarantine.

Regarding the proposal to complete the digitization of import quarantine procedures to put these procedures on the National Single Window, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that enterprises were not required to submit paper documents.

Organizations and individuals can choose to send documents, such as: Sending via the public postal service; via email, fax then send the original or sending through the National Single Window. Currently, all aquatic quarantine procedures have been deployed on the National Portal, with over 95% of the completed dossiers.

Regarding the above circulars, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that in the plan of the formulation of legal documents in 2022, the ministry has directed relevant agencies to amend and supplement the circulars to facilitate business.