Yap orders BFAR to speed up shrimp hatcheries‘ accreditation

Agriculture Secretary Arthur C. Yap will order the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) to speed up the accreditation of more P.vannamei hatcheries to meet the increasing demand for safe and viable broodstock.

Yap is responding to the call of local shrimp growers to accredit more shrimp hatcheries from the current three accredited hatcheries.

At the same time, Yap assured that the Department of Agriculture and the BFAR are not ignoring biosecurity concerns of local shrimp growers.

In an interview with The STAR, Yap stressed that specifically because of the DA’s strong concern about biosecurity, it took time to lift the ban on the importation of P.vannamei.

The DA, therefore, Yap assured, is not taking the continued biosecurity issue lightly.

The Fisheries and Aquaculture Board of the Philippines had recently appealed to Yap that the fledgling P.vannamei industry is already in danger due to the lack of viable and disease-free brood stock.

Only three hatcheries to date have been accredited to import P.vannamei brood stock, according to Chingling R. Tanco.

The three accredited hatcheries are Agri World Fisheries (with whom the BFAR initially tested the safety of P.vannamei), Jamandre Hatcheries in Iloilo and Philippine Super V Agri Fisheries Corp. in Bohol.

Because of the lack of more accredited hatcheries, local shrimp grower import illegally about 70 percent of the existing brood stock from Taiwan, China and Thailand which may carry some diseases which are likely to spread through the fledgling P.vannamei shrimp culture industry of the country.

Agri World is only able to supply about 30 percent of the required brood stock.

Furthermore, the existing brood stock is also questionable since they are not really brood stock but are "used" P.vannamei stock grown in Taiwan, China or Thailand.

According to aquaculture specialist Dr. Matthew Briggs of Epicore Bio Networks, brood stock have to be regularly refreshed as the female breeders do get "tired" and the quality of their eggs begin to deteriorate resulting in low quality shrimp larvae prone to disease.

Briggs also disclosed that of the 10 known P.vannamei hatcheries in Hawaii, only four are certified to have disease-free brood stock.

The four are High Health Aquaculture, Shrimp Improvement Systems, Kona Bay Marine Resources and Molokai Sea Farms.

Six Hawaiin hatcheries that are not certified by the US government to have disease-free brood stock are Paradise Shrimp Farm Corp., D & J Ocean Farms, Rainbow Hawaii Farms, Shrimp Production Hawaii, Hawaii Oahu SciSan Inc. and Island Aquaculture.

In the test conducted by the Department of Agriculture, the pathogen-free Pacific white shrimp used for the tests came from the United States.

The P.vannamei strain available in Taiwan is believed to contain pathogens that are harmful to other shrimp varieties in the Philippines.