Fruit shipment hindered by rule

Vietnamese fruit exporters say their products are being hindered by the American Food Safety Modernization Act which took effect earlier this year.

Speaking at the seminar on farm produce export to the US held in HCMC, Mai Xuan Thin, director of the fruit trading company Red Dragon, said his firm is anxious about shipments.

Since 2009, Red Dragon has smoothly exported 67 containers of dragon fruit by sea. However, the U.S. import agency has recently increased inspection frequency, taking samples of all shipments.

He said three containers of the firm had been held by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to test plant protection drug residues with the longest case up to seven days.

The problem is the American authorities have yet to issue the specific maximum residue limits, or MRL, so local exporters are unaware of the barrier. Therefore, if pesticide or fungicide residue is detected, the shipment can be cancelled.

In addition, the duration a shipment is held before clearing through customs is quite long, whereas fruit products must be sold out within seven days after arriving in the U.S. “This greatly affects exporters,” Thin stressed.

According to an American partner of Red Dragon, laboratories in the US are currently overloaded as the new statute is applied, prolonging the testing time of numerous fruit shipments.

Previously, export fruit to the U.S. must only undergo epidemic safety testing. Now the new statute requires food safety testing as well, said an expert from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

This is likely a way of setting up technical barriers, probably due to the surging volume of dragon fruit shipped to the US, he said.

Particularly, according to the Plant Protection Department, only 100 tons of dragon fruit was exported to the U.S. in 2009, but the volume jumped to 856 tons in 2010 and possibly some 1,300 tons this year.

Nguyen Tu Cuong, former director of the National Argo Forestry Fisheries Quality Assurance Department (Nafiqad), said the enactment of this statute is unfair to local fruit exporters since Vietnam’s fruit products have undergone multiple processes and local firms have strictly cooperated with the American agriculture department to have the license to enter this market.

Matthew Lantz, an expert of the USAID STAR plus project, advised Vietnam’s agricultural agencies to work with the American agriculture department to early issue specific MRL for export fruit products, preventing damage to local exporters.