Seafood firms must ensure more transparent product information
Seafood firms must ensure more transparent product information
Local fisheries enterprises often have not provided transparent information about their products, including origin information, export information and production process. This lowers the competitiveness for the export of local seafood products, according to experts in the agricultural industry.
Dang Kim Son, head of the Agriculture and Rural Development Ministry's Policy and Development Institute, said many local fisheries had hidden the information about products because they thought that action would bring more benefit than transparency. They also thought that the ambiguity of the information would create opportunities to sell good and also bad quality products.
If this situation continued, it would be the true business enterprises and also trade marks of agricultural and seafood products that would be affected. Then, both good and bad business would suffer losses from lack of transparent information, Son said.
Viet Nam was one of the largest seafood exporters in the global market, but almost all seafood processors and exporters in Viet Nam did not have proper awareness about the importance of providing transparent product information, he said.
The enterprises also had not considered transparency in product information to be an effective tool for increasing the competitive ability of their products on the world market.
The lack of traceable information has lead to trade fraud, including selling counterfeit and poor-quality products together with genuine products, and the loss of customer confidence.
Therefore, local seafood exports should have transparent product information to ensure traceability as required, build customer confidence and increase the competitiveness of Vietnamese products on the world market, Son said.
Nguyen Huu Dung, deputy chairman of the Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP), said traceability must be an obligatory condition of the Government and the international standards organisations for Viet Nam's seafood and farming exporters.
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