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Thailand complaint on Australia's shrimp barrier goes to WTO
BANGKOK - Thailand is set to raise the shrimp import barrier imposed by Australia for discussion in a meeting of the committee responsible for hygiene affairs of the World Trade Organization (WTO) later this month. |
Chutima Bunyapraphasara, director-general of the Trade Negotiations Department, said Australia's bio-security unit had recently produced a risk analysis report on shrimps and shrimp products imported from Thailand and come up with a compulsory measure that shrimp meat shipped to Australia must be certified as having been boiled at 85 degrees Celsius.
She said representatives of the Commerce, Agriculture, and Foreign Ministries had travelled to Australia to confer with officials concerned and assure them that Thailand had its own method to make shrimps clean and safe for consumption.
They informed the officials that such a strict measure would affect Thailand's export of shrimps to Australia, which totalled 2.29 billion baht in value last year.
They also gave assurances that Thai shrimps had never spread any disease to shrimp farms of importing countries because the Fisheries Department had strictly supervised the matter.
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Source: MCOT
