EU officials said they will inspect the application of hygiene standards at breeding farms, fishing vessels, fish ports, processing plants, freezing storages and suppliers. Officials also said that they will especially focus on examining food safety and hygiene at farms breeding bivalve mollusc in HCM City and southern Kien Giang province. Nafiqaved reported that 245 seafood processing facilities in the country meet EU standards and are qualified to export products to the market. An additional 25 businesses are waiting for the EU's licences.
The body said that only 17 batches or 0.1% of the total seafood shipments to the EU were placed under warnings this year.
In the first eight months of this year, Vietnam earned more than US$580 million from seafood exports to the EU market, an increase of 26% over the same period last year.