This goes a long way to dispelling comments from fishermen’s organizations blaming cheap imports, said Keller. During the recent Conxemar frozen seafood show in Vigo, Spain, the director of Spain’s biggest pangasius importer, E.Guillem, made a similar point that Spain’s wild fish industry has been particularly critical about increased pangasius imports.

E. Guillem Director J. Salvador Olmos Saturnino said this is a “commercial war” not based on the quality of the product. “It is normal to criticize. Their product is going down, pangasius is going up,” he told IntraFish.

“Those that criticize made a lot of money when times were good and they should have saved for the bad moments. Now they complain and try to make a problem.”

Mislabelling problem?

The issue of individually quick-froaen (IQF) fillets of pangasius not being labeled as defrosted if sold at the fresh fish counter is not a problem of the producer and processing industry, said Keller.

This is a “problem of the people in the market who are not respecting the rules that are in place to label this fish correctly,” he said. “The retailers take this fish as a cheaper alternative to high rocked priced whitefish, which is OK, but they have to tell the consumer by law that this is a defrosted fish.”

Keller urged EU member states to increase these control efforts to ensure proper implementation of the legal EU label requirements. “We do not need new rules, the existing rules should be controlled,” he said. (Theo Intrafish)