Currently, the biggest technical barrier to Vietnam's agricultural products is quarantine and food safety. For example, China – a large, traditional and long-standing market for Vietnamese agricultural products – now has major changes in imports. Regulations on traceability, packaging, labels, export certificates, etc., even the opening steps for each product are no longer just requirements from major markets such as the US, Australia. , Japan…
According to Mr. Hoang Trung, Director of Plant Protection Department (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development), fences are increasing by importing countries. For example, with plant quarantine, countries almost require exporting countries to provide very detailed technical documents on pest composition, control measures, planting areas … Meanwhile, to have enough time. The analysis of pest risk as a basis for market opening for a product is usually very long.
Fresh products, especially vegetables, are always the products that require the most stringent requirements from the market. In order to bring fresh passion fruit to meet strict standards to Europe, Japan, Korea …, Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung, Chairman of Nafoods Group Joint Stock Company (Nafoods), said that enterprises must be proactive in sourcing. raw materials for production and business. Nafoods Group has signed cooperation agreements with many localities such as Long An, Tay Ninh, Ben Tre, Gia Lai … and organized material production areas.
With the planned material production areas, Nafoods will co-operate with the locality to implement the production value chain; which provides input (varieties, materials, farming processes …) to ensure that the source of raw materials is controlled on quality, food safety and quantity according to harvest time, helping production throughout the year. stability.
The above method not only benefits Nafoods in proactively supplying raw materials to ensure quantity, quality, food safety, preservation, processing and consumption in the market, but also helps localities direct the development. develop production effectively, farmers are proactive in production and assured of outputs for agricultural products, Mr. Nguyen Manh Hung said.
One of the commodity groups subjected to increasingly complex trade and technical barriers is seafood. Anti-dumping lawsuits against Pangasius and Pangasius have happened in the past 15 years, but each year, there was another development that made enterprises passive and disadvantaged.
Mr. Truong Dinh Hoe, General Secretary of Vietnam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said that in order to limit these difficulties, VASEP has been trying hard to support enterprises in the past years. phase of administrative review to try to get the best results or support enterprises to take part in lawsuits to the World Trade Organization (WTO)
With technical barriers, VASEP constantly updates the export market's regulations and warnings on banned antibiotics such as oxytetracycline, ethoxyquin …; promptly notify businesses to strengthen control measures at the factory and farming areas.
Not only are the barriers of food safety such as banned substances, antibiotics … but import markets also require that in the production process, the requirements of social, humanities and protection responsibilities are attached. natural resources … Typically, the European Union (EU) warned “yellow card” for seafood exploitation of Vietnam.
The EU is also a prominent market with very low chemical residue regulations (MRLs) for imported agricultural and aquatic products. If exporting enterprises do not have material areas or material areas that do not meet the output, must be collected at households or collectors will make control of using pesticides in accordance with regulations. such as traceability to handle and minimize the risk of drug residues in product faces difficulties.
According to Nguyen Ngo Vi Tam, General Director of Vinh Hoan Joint Stock Company, Europe and the US have been Vietnam's most important pangasius export market for many years. In order to keep the fastidious markets, Pangasius processing and exporting enterprises must create a high reputation for their products; comply with the regulations on production environment safety, food hygiene and safety and labor protection in enterprises; investing in deep processing technology to diversify processed products …
In addition, the Pangasius processing and export industry also needs to have a plan for production area, digitize data of the whole industry to strictly control the quality of breeds and the quality of raw fish for processing. .
Mr. Tran Van Dung, General Director of Ba Ria – Vung Tau Seafood Import Export Processing Joint Stock Company (Baseafood) expressed, under pressure of purchasing seafood raw materials with traceability, investing in production and Processing with high prices reduces product competitiveness in demanding markets, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development needs to quickly solve the problem of seafood traceability certification, creating an auction market to source products. Raw materials are certified traceability before purchasing. There are thus new businesses complete procedures and records provided to the fastidious importer. At the same time, when solving the traceability of raw materials, businesses will save time, manpower, costs, reduce costs, increase the competitiveness of the product when it comes to the market.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, in order to move towards a large-scale commodity production, it is necessary first to have a sufficiently large area of arable land. Implementing this problem, in recent years, localities across the country have deployed land consolidation and exchange of agricultural land. This mechanism and policy has helped localities overcome some of the small and scattered production.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development always recommends purchasing and exporting enterprises to closely associate with farmers to develop clean production raw material areas; Checking the residues of plant protection drugs before exporting. Implementing the program of monitoring residues of plant protection drugs, the agricultural sector instructed the localities to reorganize production, especially forming raw material areas for export; coordinate with localities in inspecting and guiding the use of plant protection drugs strictly according to regulations and use principles.
In order to “avoid” strict regulations in quarantine, the development of processed products is one of the necessary directions. According to Mr. Nguyen Quoc Toan, Director of the Department of Agricultural Product Processing and Market Development, many large enterprises have continued to invest heavily in order to increase the value of agricultural products with refined and deep-processed products. to solve technical barriers when exporting raw products.
In addition, to create development, it is necessary to link the closed chain from the material area, concentrate on processing, trade organization, forming a complete body for all levels. Along with that, forming a new legal entity such as enterprises and cooperatives to shift from spontaneous production to responsible production. Whatever products are produced, they must comply with the process and regulations; closely associated with the raw material areas, processing and market organization, in order to bring Vietnam's agriculture to continue developing./.
