Seafood hazards, microbiological standards, and traceability were among the topics addressed at the Eurofish seminar on food safety in Riga

Duration : 2003 - 2004

As part of a Norwegian-financed project on food safety in Latvia, Eurofish organised a seminar on Food Safety in Processing and Trade in March 2004.

More than 40 Latvian fish processing companies, or one third of the total Latvian processing industry, attended the seminar. The Latvian Veterinary Service was well represented with eleven participants. The Latvian Veterinary Service commented on the presentations given by the experts and related it to the conditions in Latvia. In addition, some participants came from Estonia, Lithuania and Poland. All in all more than 80 people attended the seminar.

Hot topics

The audience showed a keen interest in the topics focused on: How markets react to allegations about unsafe food products and how the fishery industry may respond; how the Russian inspection system operates as regards food safety, identification and control of seafood hazards; chemical hazards (including benzopyrene, dioxins and PCBs); characterization of seafood hazards; microbiological criteria/standards and last but not least traceability.

The experts

The presentations were given by a range of experts from Norway, Denmark and Russia. Prof. Hans Henrik Huss provides valuable input throughout the project. At the seminar Marco Frederiksen from the Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, Igor Grekov from Murmansk Trawler Fleet, Terje Martinussen from the Norwegian Seafood Export Council and Torstein Skåra from Norconserv shared their expertise and thoughts with the participants.

VERIFICATION of HACCP systems

Nothing is better than individual, independent advice! Prof Hans Henrik Huss visited two factories in Latvia in April and spent a day in each factory going through their HACCP system together with the key personnel. He was accompanied by the local veterinary inspector and a representative from the National Board of Fisheries. This proved to be such a successful exercise that new verification visits are planned in Latvia in early June.

If you are interested in more information about this project please contact

Ann-Mari Haram, Trade and Market specialist at Eurofish. Ann-Mari.Haram@eurofish.dk