Agro-forestry-fisheries quality assurance must attach to the market development and the rural area

Conference to review activities in the first half of the year and implement tasks for the second half of 2021 of the National Agro-Forestry-Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad) was held on July 8 under the chairmanship of Deputy Minister of MARD Tran Thanh Nam and Head of the Department Nguyen Nhu Tiep.

Serving as the focal unit to advise the ministry on law enforcement on quality and food safety of agro-forestry-fishery products, the Nafiqad worked closely with relevant agencies and units at central and local levels to fully and synchronously implement the assigned tasks and achieve some positive results.

Regarding the replication and expansion of centralized production of national and local key products according to the value chain in Jan-June, the whole country had 1,644 linkage chains for agricultural, forestry, and fishery production, an increase by 32 chains against the same period last year. While the country had 463 thousand hectares of VietGAP certified crops, up by 33,000 hectares year on year, and  6,211 enterprises certified to produce VietGAP, 116 units more interannually. In the livestock sector, up to now, there have been 924 farms and 1,249 livestock households certified with VietGAHP. For seafood, the aquaculture area certified by VietGAP is currently 16,991 ha.

The department randomly took 10,413 samples of agro-forestry-fishery products from markets and business establishments to check the quality, of which 590 samples violating food safety requirements were detected, accounting for 5.66% of the total number of samples tested.

For samples of food safety violations detected, agencies have warned and implemented measures to handle production and business establishments according to regulations.

In the field of a monitoring program on hygiene and food safety of agricultural, forestry, and fishery products, thanks to effective supervision and inspection, the number of warning shipments for 2021 decreased compared to that of 2020. There were 47 batches of fishery products to some major import markets of Vietnam, the EU, China, and South Korea, Japan, the United States, the Eurasian Economic Union, and Brazil were warned over food safety, a slight reduction of 53 batches in 2020.

Due to the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, the conference was held virtually in combination with a face-to-face meeting, featuring the joining of seven centers and two sub-departments from the bridge points of Hai Phong city, Khanh Hoa, and Ca Mau provinces among others.

Many ideas were raised and proposed to the MARD leader relating to difficulties in operations due to the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in the northern regions, infrastructure and human resources as well as bottlenecks in trading and exporting goods to China market.

In response to the opinions, Deputy Minister Tran Thanh Nam affirmed that the agro-forestry-fisheries quality assurance must attach to the market development and the rural area. These activities regarding food safety, cooperatives, the agricultural extension must be attached to the value chain from production organization, model establishments, processing phase to trading in the markets.

The MARD leader also demanded the department to follow the instruction in ensuring the dual goal of containing the outbreak and keeping the economy on track. For the deployment of inspection and appraisal of documents, he emphasized that besides the virtual work, it is still necessary to carry out direct inspection.

“Besides direct work, two sub-departments and seven centers are the Ministry’s lower units in localities must conduct direct interaction. The most effective solution should be vaccinated as it will ensure safety for people, who work directly in dossiers inspection and completion for businesses. The direct inspection of dossiers could be an impetus for the smooth operation of export/import and domestic consumption activities,” Deputy Minister said.

The leader proposed to cooperate with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Vietnam Consulate in China, and other relevant units to hold a meeting with Nanning Customs to remove difficulties for fishery export businesses.