Caribbean Times 97th Issue - Tuesday 14th February 2017

Tuesday 14th February 2017 c a r i b b e a n t i m e s . a g 5
US, EU food standards major
hurdle for Caribbean exporters
Oraine Halstead (left) and Rhys Actie tend tomatoes in a greenhouse at Colesome Farm
at Jonas Road, Antigua.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad – As
Caricom countries struggle to move
away from their traditional reliance on
a single industry or major crop in the
face of growing economic uncertainty
worldwide, they are finding it increasingly
difficult to enter markets in the
EU and North America with new types
of food products.
But tariffs are no longer the main
barriers to accessing important markets,
according to a document produced
by the ACP-EU Overcoming Technical
Barriers to Trade (TBT) programme.
The ACP-EU is of the view that
“Non-tariffs barriers will become the
main challenge of the future multilateral
trade system.” Specifically, technical
barriers related to compliance with sanitary
and phytosanitary standards (SPS)
in export markets and other standards
including those relating to labelling
and packaging.
The EU considers these technical,
non-tariff, barriers to trade so challenging
for its African, Caribbean and Pacific
(ACP) partners that it provided 15
million euros starting in 2013 to help
those developing countries upgrade
their processes and become compliant,
thus giving them a better chance of
success on the EU and North America
markets.
The Caribbean Agribusiness Association
(CABA) is one Caribbean organisation
that was able to access funding
to help its members move toward
HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Point) certification, which the
ACP-EU TBT programme identified as
a crucial requirement. Since the early
2000s, the US and EU have stipulated
that foods entering their markets must
have HACCP certification.
Ten of CABA’s members were present
at a regional conference, held at the
Radisson Hotel in Port-of-Spain Jan.
29-30, to report on the benefits they received
from the HACCP training. They
heard some sobering statistics with regard
to the EU and US food industry
that provided context for the TBT programme.
Dr. Andre Gordon, chief executive
officer of TSL Technical Services Limited,
told delegates that each year, the
UK records approximately one million
cases of food-borne illnesses, of which
about 20,000 require hospitalisation,
and 500 deaths are recorded. The cost
to the UK of dealing with food-borne
illnesses is 1.4 billion pounds annually.
In the US, approximately 48 million
cases of foodborne illnesses are recorded
annually, resulting in 128,000 hospitalisations
and 3,000 deaths. The cost
to the US of dealing with food-borne
illnesses is approximately 77.7 billion
dollars annually, the delegates heard.
The 2016 report, “Addressing Food
Losses due to Non-Compliance with
Quality and Safety Requirements in
Export Markets: the case of Fruits and
Vegetables from the Latin America and
the Caribbean Region,” by two Food
and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
experts, underlined how much is at
stake for Caribbean agribusiness exporters.
The report reveals that Latin America
and the Caribbean (LAC) provide
over 90 per cent of the fruits and nearly
80 per cent of all vegetables imported
by the US. Nonetheless, some countries
in the region have “very high rejection
rates” at US ports of entry, including
Jamaica, Bolivia and the Dominican
Republic, the document states.
The report said, “While many LAC
countries have a good rate of acceptance
in comparison with other countries
exporting to the USA and EU, a
few countries within LAC perform
very poorly, revealing great disparity in
cont’d on pg 6