Last week we showed you the fishermen who hustle every year around this time to catch the rare sea shrimp at the North side of the city. As we showed you it's all about hauling in the most shrimp which will ultimately bring in more cash. Sounds straight forward right? Well, when looking at the Shrimp industry at the commercial level - it is anything but simple. Today stakeholders in the industry held a workshop at the George Price Center in Belmopan to discuss the standards and regulations that Belize must follow in order to enrich the quality and packaging of the product as well as other key elements that will improve service to you the consumers.
Janice Hilaire, Project Coordinator
"To put it into context, we as I said I work and seeks to harmonize or develop standards across the region across, the Caricom and the Sates. We are network of national grower's standards so that Belize grower's standards is one of our members. So we are working with the bureau
and the shrimp value chain and in effort to make the value chain more competitive, the value change has made a lot of strides. The shrimp industry is very vibrant. It's doing well in the economy and so we are just trying to bring all our stakeholders within the value chain together with our member the Bureau of Standards and to sort our issues within which they can work with the Bureau of Standards so they try to even improve. So not necessarily improve but as whatever the buyers are requiring, export markets but I must say but why I say expert markets the issue of quality infrastructure is not limited only to export, but it is to ensure your consumer health and safety as well as protection of your environment. Quality infrastructure relates to all things that deals with standardization, implementing standards, labelling packaging as required by certain markets, as requires by even your domestic buyers, relates to measurement, you want to do that even when you're buying a pound of shrimp, It is exactly a pound of shrimp that you are buying. Accreditation - those institution which are certifying the products, they are competent to do so as well as conformity assessment which deals with inspection testing and certification of products."
Ulrich Harmes-Leidtke, Metrology Institute, Germany
"Was done before several studies and one particular feasibility study for this exercise and after this workshop, the process will continue also was implementation, especially related to services for quality."
Tomorrow is the last day of the workshop. An action plan will also be devised.
