Talks continuing over US ban on catfish trade

Dialogue on the removal of the US ban on catfish from Guyana continues between the Ministry of Agriculture and the US Embassy, Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha said when contacted on Saturday.

According to the minister, who has been working to have the trade resumed, the bilateral talks have been continuous. He said that the talks have advanced and that his ministry is preparing several documents to submit to the US authorities for review.

The Minister said that the documents requested pertain to the processing and storage method for the fish after being caught, among other issues.

He also stated that they are scheduled to meet with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Department to prepare additional documentation on the trade.

Following a visit to Guyana last year by former United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, a commitment was given for the two countries to revisit the current export restriction on wild-caught catfish.

“We’ll work with you. We’ll put it through the U.S. regulatory process and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) review process, and I’m confident we can get a good outcome,” Pompeo had said.

Mustapha had explained that the Guyanese methodology of harvesting catfish is different from the US standards and as such they will have to put forward their case.

“In Guyana, we are doing it very differently than in the United States because we are capturing these catfish in the wild rather in the United States [where] they are rearing it and feeding it and selling it in in the markets. We are hoping that after this revision of our submission, hopefully, we can get this ban lifted,” he had said.

The Minister noted too that his position has not changed from when he took office and is committed to having the export of catfish resumed.

He had said that not just farming would be priority for him, as the plight of fisherfolk would also be addressed. He remains optimistic that with enough lobbying and implementing of necessary requirements, the resumption of catfish exports from Guyana to the United States could be resolved soon.

The United States imposed a ban on catfish (siluriformes) imports from Guyana and other non-compliant countries in September of 2017. The exporters from the various countries were required by the US Food and Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) to provide documentation to verify that their inspection system was equivalent to US standards.

This led to fishing businesses having to downscale or export to Canada while they awaited the reopening of the lucrative New York market.

Guyana has fallen short of the US standards in three areas: the presence of inspectors; insufficient documentation detailing verification of each step in the sanitation and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP); and insufficient documentation specifying how the industry manages adulterated (tainted) catfish products.

With the ban on the trade, the price for catfish species, specifically Gilbacker, dropped significantly to $200 to $300 per pound in contrast to the $800 to $1000 it fetched when it was being exported to the United States.

In 2015, FSIS amended its regulations to establish a mandatory inspection programme for fish of the order Siluriformes and products derived from these species.

The amendment was the result of a 15-year battle by the Catfish Farmers of America (CFA) to curtail catfish imports from Vietnam. The US government had previously passed the 2008 and 2014 Farm Bills, which amended the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), to make “catfish” a species amenable to the FMIA, and therefore, subject to FSIS inspection, before removing the term “catfish”, so as to make “all fish of the order Siluriformes” subject to FSIS jurisdiction and inspection.

The 2015 standards, which became effective on March 1st, 2016, demand the presence of inspectors in (processing) plants for one-hour during an eighthour shift. According to the USDA website, though the standards became effective in 2016, a transitional period was granted before full enforcement commenced on September 1st, 2017.

The US Embassy here had said that Guyana was notified since November 2015 of the steps that needed to be taken to avoid a ban on the export of catfish to the United States.