T&T im­ports 113 tonnes of tilapia year­ly. And a large por­tion of the im­port­ed tilapia comes from Chi­na, where con­cerns have been raised by the US that some farm­ers are feed­ing the farm-raised fish fae­ces from chick­en, pig and geese.In the last few months, the Unit­ed States me­dia have pub­li­cised and even warned con­sumers to be wary of con­sum­ing tilapia, as some farm­ers in Chi­na were feed­ing the fish­es an­i­mal fae­ces.

Splashed on the In­ter­net were head­lines Tilapia raised on fae­ces hits US ta­bles and Asian Seafood Raised on Pig Fae­ces Ap­proved for US Con­sumers.Feed­ing fish an­i­mal fe­ces makes them high­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to bac­te­r­i­al in­fec­tions like sal­mo­nel­la and E coli, said US re­searcher Michael Doyle, who has stud­ied food­borne dis­eases in Chi­na.

Doyle, di­rec­tor of the Cen­ter for Food Safe­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Geor­gia, said in a 2012 MSN News re­port that while there are some re­al­ly good aqua­cul­ture ponds in Asia, many of these ponds use un­treat­ed chick­en, pig and geese ma­nure as the pri­ma­ry nu­tri­tion."The ma­nure is fre­quent­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with mi­crobes like sal­mo­nel­la. In some places, like Thai­land for ex­am­ple, they will just put the chick­ens over the pond and they (chick­ens) would just poop right in the pond."

Now chair­man of the Tilapia Task Force and the pres­i­dent of the Tilapia Grow­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion Ger­ard Weekes is ap­peal­ing for tests to be un­der­tak­en on the im­port­ed fish.He said the task force raised the is­sue with Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj twice, the last be­ing in De­cem­ber, ad­vis­ing that the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute (Cariri) un­der­take tests to al­lay their fears, but claimed no ac­tion has been tak­en.

"The facts are out there. The em­pir­i­cal ev­i­dence has to come from Cariri which is what we asked for in the first place. We don't know if the fish is be­ing reared in prop­er con­di­tions out­side. We know that the Chi­nese have been quite ca­pa­ble of rear­ing fish in ponds that are fed with an­i­mal fae­ces."He said some of the fil­lets com­ing out of Chi­na and In­done­sia are la­belled "not for sale in the USA," but were be­ing sold else­where.

Ma­haraj scep­ti­cal­about lo­cal tilapia group

Ma­haraj, mean­while, is scep­ti­cal of the lo­cal tilapia group. He called on them to bring the ev­i­dence."If they have ev­i­dence that the tilapia is com­ing in­to Trinidad are fed fae­ces, I en­cour­age them to bring it for­ward. You can­not bring an In­ter­net re­port which does not name peo­ple or sup­pli­ers and ad­vance that as ev­i­dence. I can­not act on ru­mours."In the last decade, Ma­haraj said, T&T has been im­port­ing tilapia from Chi­na and no one had com­plained of any ill­ness or health prob­lems.

Ma­haraj said if the task force could show oth­er­wise, he was will­ing to work with them."Fail­ing that, I would not act."

Peo­ple con­sume135 tonnes in T&T a year

Peo­ple in T&T con­sume 135 tonnes of tilapia a year. T&T, Ma­haraj said, im­ports 113 tonnes of tilapia an­nu­al­ly; Chi­na is a main sup­pli­er. Lo­cal tilapia farm­ers on­ly pro­duce 22 tonnes of the fish con­sumed an­nu­al­ly in T&T.Ma­haraj said, how­ev­er, "I have to be wary that they are not try­ing to elim­i­nate the com­pe­ti­tion from Trinidad in or­der to mo­nop­o­lise the mar­ket. I think they have an agen­da to vie in a very com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment. I don't know if this is the way to go. They have to in­crease their ef­fi­cien­cies."

Ma­haraj said at the last meet­ing with the group, the task force did not raise any is­sues about the im­port­ed tilapia. He said they on­ly put for­ward a list of rec­om­men­da­tions for the "en­hance­ment" of the lo­cal fish in­dus­try.Ma­haraj said the im­port­ed fish in some shops sell for less than the lo­cal­ly reared ones.Some of the frozen fil­lets, Weeks said, are in­di­vid­u­al­ly wrapped in plas­tic and sold in box­es at whole­sale prices.

In some shops, the fish is re­tailed for $20 to $30 per pound de­pend­ing on the grade.Fresh tilapia is sold at $10 per pound by lo­cal farm­ers to su­per­mar­kets, cater­ers, hote­liers and restau­rants.At fish stalls, con­sumers pay be­tween $12 to $15 per pound.

'We are not try­ing­to squeeze out im­porters'

Weekes said lo­cal farm­ers were not try­ing to squeeze out im­porters, who pay no du­ty and tax­es on the im­port­ed fil­lets. He said all they want­ed to do was en­sure the pub­lic's safe­ty.Weekes said since 2011 the task force has been com­plain­ing about the mat­ter.

Doyle: 50 per cent of Chi­nese tilapia raised on an­i­mal fae­ces

Doyle, mean­while, es­ti­mat­ed that rough­ly 50 per cent of Chi­nese tilapia were raised us­ing an­i­mal fae­ces.Chi­na's tilapia farms op­er­ate un­der in­tense pres­sure to slash costs and pro­duce as much cheap tilapia as pos­si­ble.Though Amer­i­ca gets 82 per cent of tilapia from Chi­na, the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion on­ly in­spects 2.7 per cent of the im­port­ed fish. In 2007, Chi­na signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing with the US, aimed at im­prov­ing the safe­ty of trad­ed food and feed prod­ucts.

A 2008 Con­gres­sion­al Re­search Ser­vice re­port on food and agri­cul­tur­al im­ports from Chi­na as­sert­ed that they have been mov­ing ag­gres­sive­ly to im­prove their food safe­ty sys­tem and to close un­safe plants.

–re­port­ing by Shal­iza Has­sanali