EU ambassador rules out possibility of a ban on Indian shrimp imports

The European Union (EU) has ruled out the possibility of a ban on imports of Indian shrimps.
 
Clearing the air, Tomasz Kozlowski, Ambassador of the European Union (EU) to India, on Tuesday said, “We are not going to put any ban on Indian shrimps. Only one thing is that we have some health regulations in Europe and all imports from abroad should meet our requirement."
 
There was growing concern that the EU was seriously worried over the use of antibiotics in Indian shrimps- a fact that surfaced continuously in its findings. It was also dissatisfied with the response it got from the Indian authorities.

 
Last year, a delegation from the EU was in India. The delegation was tasked with auditing the control systems in place governing the production of exportable fishery products in India.
 
“Indian shrimp exports to EU is going on, but the exporters should be sure that the shrimps meet our health regulations. I don’t know whether the percentage of inspections of Indian consignments will be increased or not”, the envoy said.
 
In the past, European officials had not only complained to Indian counterparts about the high incidence of antibiotics in shrimp, but had also increased the test samples from 10 per cent to 50 per cent.

 
Indian authorities had described EU's decision to increase the sample size from 10 per cent to 50 per cent for testing the seafood consignments from India as unfair as the same was kept at 10 per cent for other exporting countries.
 
EU, after USA and South East Asia, is the third largest destination for Indian seafood with frozen shrimp continuing to be the major item of export.