Hope for catfish exporters following Pompeo visit

Local fishermen will welcome news that United States Secretary of State Michael Pompeo discussed with government a review of the ban on catfish from this country.

“I raised with Secretary Pompeo, the need to revisit the current export restriction on wild-caught catfish – a product which is (in) great demand in the Guyanese diaspora,” President Irfaan Ali said on Friday following the exchange of a framework for investment agreement at State House.

Pompeo said that his government will work with this country to resolve the issue and he was confident that there will be a resolution. 

“The president mentioned catfish.  I used to catch catfish when I was a young man.  One great – one great thing is that we’re getting the information that’s needed.  We’ll work with you.  We’ll put it through the U.S. regulatory process and the WTO (World Trade Organisation) review process, and I’m confident we can get a good outcome,” he said to loud applause led by Minister of Agriculture Zulfikar Mustapha, who was in attendance with other ministers.

Pompeo later told the state-owned National Communications Network in an interview that while the oil boom here serves as an attraction for US  investors in that sector, it was not the only area that his government was assessing for its business investors.

“For those who want to come here and invest and grow Guyana, we’re all about trying to find American companies, not just in the energy industry but in agriculture – we talked about catfish today – all of these places where we think we can do a good turn and make it a lot better for both the American people and those here in Guyana as well,” he said.

Following the signing, Mustapha told reporters that he was elated for the fisherfolk of this country who depend on export of this species of fish, especially targeted to this country’s diaspora in the Florida and New York areas, for their livelihood.

“I am happy that the Secretary of State mentioned that they will be reviewing our submissions in terms of the regulations and the rules and hopefully that we can get the ban lifted. As we know that this is a $1.8 billion industry and over the last three years our fisher folks have suffered”, Mustapha said.

 “I am very optimistic that we can have this ban lifted…in Guyana, we are doing it very differently than in the United States because we are capturing these catfish in the wild rather in the United States, they are rearing it and feeding it and selling it in in the markets. We are hoping that after this revision of our submission, hopefully, we can get this ban lifted,” he added.

Shortly after taking office, he had said that not just farming would be priority for him as the plight of fisherfolk would also be addressed. He was optimistic that with enough lobbying and implementing of necessary requirements, the resumption of catfish exports from Guyana to the United States could be resolved soon.

The United States imposed a ban on catfish (siluriformes) imports from Guyana and other non-compliant countries in September of 2017. The exporters from the various countries were required by the US Food and Safety Inspection Services (FSIS) to provide documentation to verify that their inspection system was equivalent to US standards.

This led to fishing businesses having to downscale or export to Canada while they awaited the reopening of the lucrative New York market.

Guyana has fallen short of the US standards in three areas: the presence of inspectors; insufficient documentation detailing verification of each step in the sanitation and Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP); and insufficient documentation specifying how the industry manages adulterated (tainted) catfish products.

With the ban on the trade, the price for catfish species, specifically Gilbacker, dropped significantly to $200 to $300 per pound in contrast to the $800 to $1000 it fetched when it was being exported to the United States.

In 2015, FSIS amended its regulations to establish a mandatory inspection programme for fish of the order Siluriformes and products derived from these species.

The amendment was the result of a 15-year battle by the Catfish Farmers of America (CFA) to curtail catfish imports from Vietnam. The US government had previously passed the 2008 and 2014 Farm Bills, which amended the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), to make ‘‘catfish’’ a species amenable to the FMIA, and therefore, subject to FSIS inspection, before removing the term ‘‘catfish,’’ so as to make ‘‘all fish of the order Siluriformes’’ subject to FSIS jurisdiction and inspection.

The 2015 standards, which became effective on March 1st, 2016, demand the presence of inspectors in (processing) plants for one-hour during an eight-hour shift. According to the USDA website, though the standards became effective in 2016, a transitional period was granted before full enforcement commenced on September 1st, 2017.

The US Embassy here had said that Guyana was notified since November 2015 of the steps that needed to be taken to avoid a ban on the export of catfish to the United States.