DA to allow importation of Pacific white shrimp

Agriculture Secretary Arthur Yap said the Department of Agriculture (DA) is allowing in principle the importation and commercial propagation of the exotic Pacific white shrimp (litopeneaus vannamei) in the Philippines.

"The government is allowing the entry of vannamei in the country but subject to certain conditions which must be followed, there is a protocol that has to be observed before commercial production is finally allowed, said Yap.

Yap said the procedure will be for BFAR to import disease-free and disease-resistant mother stock of vannamei from recognized breeders in Honolulu, US. The stock will be spawned to produce fry at the agency’s National Integrated Fisheries Technology and Development Center in Bonuan, Pangasinan.

The fry will be stocked in the center’s grow-out ponds and grown to marketable sizes where close monitoring of the stock will be conducted to check if diseases occur.

"We will have to wait for the results of the second generation of fry. If it will be disease-free up to harvest, it will be considered safe for culture outside and this will be made available to cooperator ponds for trial culture. It is expected that eventually, private hatcheries will be accredited to import their own mother stock for the commercial production of vannamei," said BFAR Director Malcolm Sarmiento.

The local availability of vannamei fry will make it unnecessary to smuggle the fry into the country since it is no longer banned.

Sarmiento said BFAR will continue its surveillance to prevent the covert entry of uncertified vannamei fry into the country’s ports of entry.

The new policy according to BFAR, will leave it to the producers to decide which variety to grow.

This should settle earlier dis-agreements between Luzon prawn producers who pushed for the entry and commercial production of vannamei, and the Negros Occidental prawn producers and other growers in the Visayas region who pioneered in exporting black tiger prawns in the 1980s.

Currently, vannamei is being produced primarily for the local market and is known in the wet markets as "suahe." The volume being produced is still too small to merit the interest of processors and exporters. It is however, gaining acceptance from local fastfood chains and Chinese restaurants.

Those opposing the commercial propagation of vannamei said there are just too many risks involved with the unfamiliar species.

But Yap said BFAR is making sure the risks are minimized, if not totally eliminated.

"The primary reason for conducting the trial production will be to prepare safety nets if diseases occur. We are mostly concerned that tiger prawn production is not contaminated," said Yap.