Processing tra fish for exports (Photo: VNA)The project was financed by the European Unionunder the EU SWITCH-Asia Programme and implemented in the Mekong Delta fromApril 2013 to March 2017, with the aim of increasing the competitiveness ofVietnam’s tra fish sector in the global market, mitigating negative impacts onthe environment, and promoting responsible production.
Vice President of the Hanoi University ofScience and Technology Tran Van Top said the four-year-old project hassupported over 50 businesses, 120 breeding areas, 130 households, and 12cooperatives as well as attracted nearly 3,000 people to its trainingprogrammes and technical workshops.
The project focused on training farmers in howto increase the rate of living fish and reduce feed costs and pollution, thuscutting production costs by 7-10 percent. It also helped 33 breeding regionsand cooperatives to receive international sustainable aquaculture certificates.
Over 70 processingfactories received training in cleaner production and energy saving, thuscutting electricity costs by 18-20 percent and water usage by 26-30 percent,and reducing over 21,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Coordinator of the SUPA project Le Xuan Thinhsaid the project has enabled Vietnamese tra fish export companies to create 20new products to serve European customers.
Despite having a modern production chain andmost breeding areas receiving international certificates and meeting qualitycriteria of such choosy markets as the EU and the US, Vietnamese tra fishindustry still faces the problem of smear campaigns by foreign media, which hasbeen occurring for nearly 10 years in many countries, especially in Europe.
Thinh said the problem persists due to the sector’sslow response and poor communication activities. The strong development ofsocial networks also helps the adverse information spread quicker than everamong customers, while mainstream information is not readily available.
Responses in foreign languages, especially inimport countries, are still limited, just only in Vietnamese and English, headded.
In fact, the demand for tra fish in Europeremains high. A survey conducted by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in 12European countries unveiled that 86 percent of respondents said they know abouttra fish products and one third of them reported to buy this product regularly.
Mag Karim, a WWF representative in Austria, saidEuropean customers are willing to pay high prices for sustainable and environmentally-friendlyproducts. Therefore, Vietnamese tra fishsector should further improve quality of products and boost communicationcampaigns to change the awareness of European consumers, he suggested.
To put an end to the smear campaign of Vietnamesetra fish, the SUPA management board has proposed building a quick informationresponse centre on seafood market in general and tra fish in particular.-VNA
VNA
