There has been negative news on Vietnam’s pangasius placed on online newspapers of Rumani such as realitate.net, ziuanews.ro, bzi.ro, adevarul.ro, puppe.ro, secretulsanatatii.net…, leaving bad impact to Vietnam’s pangasius exports to this market.
An article suggested local people not have or order any food related to Vietnam’s pangasius in restaurants, and even accused this kind of fish of being given different names to cheat consumers.
Some online newspapers call local people on boycotting Vietnam’s pangasius and restaurants serving this fish.
The fact that Vietnam’s pangasius is smeared on pages will surely affect the country’s export to Rumani market. Unfortunately among of these pages, Adevarul.ro, Realitatea.ro have large amount of visitors, causing strong propagation of these inaccurate news articles.
Although Rumani is a small market for Vietnam’s pangasius in the southern east of Europe with less than 5 million USD each in the last three years and 1.75 million USD in the first half of 2018 (mainly frozen fillet), VASEP worries that such inaccurate news may be propagated uncontrollably through internet. VASEP is following the news and figuring it out from the information provided by Vietnamese Commercial Counselor in Rumani in order to give prompt measure and repair Vietnam’s strategic pangasius image.
In the early 2017 Cuatro Television (Channel 4) of Spain broadcasted a ¨En el punto de mira¨ reportage related to pangasius farming and trading. The reportage was set up on purpose in comparison with pangasius farming in Spain to make consumers believe that Spain’s pangasius is reared with higher quality. Additionally, an investigation was conducted to reveal some places selling other fishes in the name of pangasius at higher price.
A television channel of Germany in 2011 placed a reportage claiming pangasius as cheap, low quality and being farmed in polluted water; the turnover in this market thus decreased up to 25 per cent, reported Klaas Jan Mazereeuw from Seafood Connection in 2013.
Vietnam’s pangasius export to Europe was down 20 per cent in 2012 possibly following the issues of antibiotics, water quality, unsustainable feed and disposal of waste on farms, said Mazereeuw.
When it comes to negative news on Vietnam’s pangasius, Professor Simon Bush from Research at the Environmental Policy Group of Wageningen University (Netherlands) says “Pangasius has raised a concern about food safety and environmental security; however such accuse is made without any evidentiary support. Our analysis has shown that accuse on pangasius is contrary to scientific research that the fish brings very few risks of food safety and environmental impact. In fact, pangasius is new to the western market but holds an important segment of retails and food service, which makes it become the victim of its own success”.
VFM
