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Weekly Overview: Asian Countries Hit Hard by US Import Duties on Shrimp

Salmonids Nutrition Health +8 more

ANALYSIS - In the past week, the US Department of Commerce (DoC) has imposed anti-dumping import duties on frozen warm-water shrimp from India, Malaysia, China, Thailand, Viet Nam, Ecuador and Indonesia, due to fears that subsidised low price imports are harming the local industry, writes Lucy Towers, TheFishSite Editor.

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Malaysia looks to be hardest hit and will be pushed out of the US market if the 62.74 per cent duty goes ahead.

The Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Processors (VASEP) described the duty of 6.07 per cent placed on the country as unreasonable as it failed to take in to account rising input costs in the local industry.

Norwegian salmon farming company Marine Harvest has failed to reach an agreement with Cermaq on an offer for the company, despite its willingness to increase the offer price. The failure in negotiations resulted in Marine Harvest submitting an offer of NOK 107 per share to Cermaq.

Following the issue of the offer, Cermaq said the offer undervalues the company and branded it 'inadequate'.

There has been a focus around sustainable fish feed this week after the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership (SFP) released its annual sustainability overview of fisheries used for fishmeal and fish oil.

The report found that about 70 per cent of fish from the Atlantic Ocean and South America used for fishmeal and fish oil come from relatively well managed stocks and would meet the current feed requirements of most leading aquaculture certifications.

The other 30 per cent of fish originate from 14 stocks that are not well managed.

The importance of having a sustainable fishmeal supply was deemed important in Thailand recently. The Thai government has decided that the aquaculture sector can be improved through the assessment of its fishmeal production plants by the IFFO Responsible Supply (RS) certificate.

Charoen Pokhpand Foods has already decided to join IFFO with a view to entering one or more of its plants for certification.

With the increasing pressure on fish stocks used for feed, research in the Dominican Republic has looked at the use of the vegetable artichoke in tilapia diets.

In disease news, two outbreaks of Infectious Salmon Anaemia (ISA) have been reported in Norway. The first outbreak was in the Troms area and the second in the Nordland area.

A suspected outbreak of ISA has also been found on a Gray Aqua farm in Newfoundland, Canada. The farm is currently under quarantine while the samples are analysed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

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