The European Commission’s final report of the mission carried out in Mauritius, last February, evaluated the sanitary requirements of fishery products intended for export to the European Union (EU). It concluded that even with several improvements made since last evaluation, in 2006, the remaining irregularities within Mauritius fishing industry are undermining the reliability of local control.

Mauritius is home to two major tuna processing facilities.  Princes Tuna Mauritius (PTM), a canning factory employing about 2000 people, and Thon de Mascareignes, a joint Mauritian-Spanish venture, which started operation in 2005 with a projected production of about 50.000 M/T of loins annually.

The major deficiencies found by the Commission included not enough knowledge of the Community sanitary requirements, non-compliant vessels/establishments maintained on the list approved to export to EU, serious non-compliances in approved establishments and vessels, as well as inadequate follow-up of measures set to correct identified problems.

The official report -which was published recently- stated: “the official controls set in place by the Mauritian competent authorities cannot be considered as providing guarantees at least equivalent to Community requirements. Therefore, the (Mauritian) competent authority is currently not in position to verify and certify the conditions prescribed by the export Health certificate attached to Regulation (EC) No 2074/2005”. This basically means that the EU mission concludes that the authorities of Mauritius are not competent to issue health certificates on canned tuna products and pre-cooked loins which are daily exported to the EU.

A response was issued last July by the Mauritius authorities as a follow-up of the actions being taken to fit under the EU requirements.

The measures included increasing staff awareness of the relevant Community requirements; creation of registration procedures for aquaculture farms and fishing vessels. In addition, regular inspections for vessels/establishments were described as “immediate action”.

According to the document, a list of approved vessels/establishments is already enclosed and it is proposed that every 6 months the Mauritian authorities will submit an up-to-date list of approved establishments.