SEAFOODNEWS.COM by John Sackton — Dec 13, 2013 — China's food inspection service, AQSIQ, has banned imports of geoducks and other bivalve mollusks from the West coast of the U.S. following a finding that two shipments of geoducks contained PSP levels higher than the Chinese allow, and also higher than allowed levels of inorganic arsnic.
This is a potentially huge blow to the geoduck industry, primarily based in Puget Sound. Washington harvests about 5 million pounds of geoduck annually, and another 2 million lbs are grown through aquaculture. This ban comes before the Chinese New Year, the season of heaviest demand.
Jerry Borchert of the Washington Department of Health said on NPR that he's never encountered such a ban based on the Chinese government's assertion that these U.S. safeguards failed to screen out contaminated seafood.
“They’ve never done anything like that, where they would not allow shellfish from this entire area based on potentially two areas or maybe just one area. We don’t really know yet,” Borchert said.
The problemis that so far, China has not identified which area the problematic clams came from.
In the letter to US officials, AQSIQ said:
"Recently, two shipments of geoducks originated from the 67 Northeast Pacific sea region in the United States were found to have above standard residue of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) above the maximum level 30.2 MU/g permitted by China standard, and inorganic arsenic (0.5mg/kg by China standard) during the inspection/quarantine conducted by China Inspection and Quarantine Agencies.
AQSIQ would like to notify the following:
1. Based on this notification, please conduct investigation on paralytic shellfish poisoning and inorganic arsenic monitoring records, and information for geoduck catch, transfer and packing and delivery, then, forward the investigation results to AQSIQ.
2. To ensure safety, AQSIQ has suspended tentatively importation of geoduck and other double shell aquatic animals from 67 Northeast Pacific in the USA, and intensified the inspection/quarantine rate for geoduck originated from other sea regions in the USA.
3. AQSIQ request the US side to take effective measures to ensure the safety of live aquatic animals for exports to China and prevent this incidents from happening again.
NOAA says that they cannot issue health export certificates until the suspension is lifted.
Also speaking on NPR, George Hill, the geoduck harvest coordinator for Puget Sound's Suquamish Tribe said “It’s had an incredible impact. A couple thousand divers out of work right now.”
Bill Dewey, a spokesman for Taylor Shellfish, the largest shellfish supplier in Washington, is looking at other solutions.
"I was just talking to our geoduck manager and he’s got two harvest crews and three beach crews essentially doing makework," Dewey said. "He’s too nice a guy to lay them off during the holidays but there’s only so much you can be charitable about making work for people and eventually you’re going to have to lay them off."
Officials think it may take months to clear the ban, so the outlook is very uncertain. The first step would be to try and identify specific areas where there might be problems, and then NOAA could try to persuade the Chinese to lift the ban on other areas.
However, producer options are limited as 90% of Washington's harvest goes to China. Last year the total harvest was worth about $68 million.
This story originally appeared on Seafood.com, a subscription site. It is reprinted with permission.